Press releases

Humanitarian need is at its highest-ever level, and what is worse is that we have long known all the terrible causes behind it.

A coalition of organizations has published a new database today revealing $38.2 billion worth of investment and financial relationships that involve 318 financial intermediary clients of Dutch development bank FMO and the World Bank’s private lending arm, the IFC. 

A new Oxfam report shows an undeniable increase in gender-based violence (GBV) during the COVID-19 pandemic around the world to which too many governments and donors are not doing enough to tackle.

In reaction to Pfizer’s announcement of voluntary licenses of its COVID-19 oral antiviral treatment Paxlovid to the Medicines Patent Pool, People’s Vaccine Alliance spokesperson and Oxfam America’s Senior Advocacy Advisor, Robbie Silverman, said: “Pfizer’s announcement to voluntarily licence the COVID treatment Paxlovid is welcome but is far from enough." 
 
 

New figures from the Peoples Vaccine Alliance reveal that the companies behind two of the most successful COVID vaccines – Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna – are making combined profits of $65,000 every minute. The figures based on the latest company reports are released as CEOs from pharmaceutical industry meet for the annual STAT summit —the equivalent of a ‘Big Pharma Davos’— from 16-18 November.

Greece is turning more and more to the practice of administrative detention to manage people who arrive in Greece to claim asylum. This is according to the new report, Detention as the Default: How Greece, with the support of the EU, is generalizing administrative detention of migrants, from the Greek Council for Refugees (GCR) and Oxfam. The report found an excessive use of administrative detention with nearly 3,000 migrants in detention as of June 2021.

Gabriela Bucher, Oxfam International Executive Director said: “Clearly some world leaders think they aren’t living on the same planet as the rest of us. It seems no amount of fires, rising sea levels or droughts will bring them to their senses to stop increasing emissions at the expense of humanity."
 

As the latest draft COP26 text is published, Tracy Carty, head of Oxfam’s COP26 delegation said: “Here in Glasgow, the world’s poorest countries are in danger of being lost from view, but the next few hours can and must change the course we are on. What’s on the table is still not good enough."

In response to the announcement that AstraZeneca is to move away from the non-profit model for COVID vaccines, Anna Marriott, Oxfam’s Health Policy Manager and spokesperson for the People’s Vaccine Alliance, said: “AstraZeneca is breaking its repeated and celebrated public promises of a non-profit vaccine for all countries for the duration of this pandemic and to never to make a profit in any low- and middle-income country from this publicly funded vaccine."
 

Responding to the latest draft of the COP26 decision text released earlier today, Tracy Carty, head of Oxfam's COP26 delegation said: "This draft text is still missing some vital elements."

Responding to the draft COP26 decision text, Tracy Carty, head of Oxfam’s COP26 delegation said: "This draft COP decision text is too weak. It fails to respond to the climate emergency being faced by millions of people now, who are living with unprecedented extreme weather and being pushed further into poverty."

An international coalition of human rights law groups, public health experts, and civil society organisations is taking legal action against the US, UK, Germany, Norway, and Switzerland, on the grounds that these countries are in violation of international human rights law by failing to intervene on what has been an inequitable and racially discriminatory rollout of the vaccine and other COVID healthcare technologies. 

The carbon footprints of the richest 1 per cent of people on Earth is set to be 30 times greater than the level compatible with the 1.5°C goal of the Paris Agreement in 2030, according to new research out today. It comes as delegates grapple with how to keep this goal alive at the COP26 meeting in Glasgow.

Responding to reports that around 20 countries have committed to stop financing overseas fossil fuel projects by the end of 2022, Oxfam's climate policy lead Nafkote Dabi said: "This is an encouraging move that will divert much-needed resources to clean energy and help countries to develop in a low carbon way. Energy is vital to economic and social development, burning fossil fuels is not. This is the only way we can meet the collective goal of limiting global heating to 1.5°C."

In response to the announcement that the World Health Organisation (WHO) has granted emergency use license for the COVID-19 vaccine, Covaxin, developed by Bharat Biotech in India, People’s Vaccine Alliance spokesperson and Oxfam Health Policy Manager, Anna Marriott, said: "Another approved vaccine to fight COVID-19 is fantastic news. We strongly encourage Bharat Biotech to show pandemic leadership and do the right thing for humanity by agreeing to share the vaccine technology and rights with the WHO's COVID Technology Access Pool, so that more manufacturers around the world can produce them.

One year since conflict broke out in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, almost seven million people in Tigray and in neighboring Amhara and Afar are suffering from the toll of violence, human rights abuses, hunger, locusts, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

At the end of the G20 Summit in Rome, Italy, Oxfam panned the lack of bold and effective action from the world leaders at such an important moment in the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Ahead of the G20 Summit in Rome, Italy, Oxfam calls on G20 leaders to take urgent action to dramatically scale up manufacturing and access to COVID-19 vaccines around the world, promote a fair economic recovery, fight hunger, lower dangerous greenhouse gas emissions, and help the poorest countries adapt to the climate change already happening.