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G20 finance ministers met in St. Andrews, Scotland, on 7 November 2009. Oxfam reacts to their communiqué.

Oxfam estimates that the proposed EU aid cuts could be enough to have lifted more than 4.6 million people in the poorest countries out of extreme poverty. The proposed cuts to emergency aid alone would mean the EU is turning a blind eye on the plight of 150 million people affected by disasters or conflicts.

Joint agency release: It is a global scandal that millions of women and newborn babies die or suffer severe injury during childbirth every year – despite the fact that the vast majority of these injuries and deaths are preventable.

Over a quarter of a billion more people could crash into extreme levels of poverty in 2022 because of COVID-19, rising global inequality and the shock of food price rises supercharged by the war in Ukraine, reveals a new Oxfam brief today. 

As the G8 Summit comes to a close, international agency Oxfam criticized the leaders for their failure to deliver on their promises and for trying to divert attention by cobbling together a small initiative for maternal and child health.

Responding to the G20 Heads of State Summit, Rebecca Gowland, Head of Inequality, Campaigns and Policy, said: “In 2020 the richest economies bolstered their resilience to Covid-19 with a $10 trillion injection while providing 2,000 times less than that – $5 billion – in debt relief to the poorest countries. In the direst global health and socio-economic crises for 100 years the G20 has failed to adequately support the poorest people in the world.

Millions of poor and vulnerable people face hunger and poverty this year and next because of record global temperatures, droughts and erratic rains in 2014 and 2015, compounded by the development of possibly the most powerful El Niño on record.

Fair tax regimes are vital to finance well-functioning states and to enable governments to uphold citizens’ rights to basic services, such as healthcare and education.

"The failure to cancel debt payments will only delay the tsunami of debt that will engulf many of the world’s poorest countries, leaving them unable to afford the investment in healthcare and social safety nets so desperately needed", said Jaime Atienza, Oxfam International's Debt Policy Lead, in reaction to the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors Meeting.

Every year, the Somali diaspora sends home approximately $1.3bn. But this system of remittances to Somalia is under threat, particularly in the US and the UK.