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In areas of northern Mali the price of food and fuel is rocketing as supplies start to dry up after looting following recent military operations, and with traders who have fled the area failing to return amid growing numbers of reports of reprisal attacks.

After ceasefire talks collapsed and violence erupted yet again, Oxfam today called on all states to immediately suspend transfers of arms or ammunition to Israel and any Palestinian armed group.

The full extent of Hurricane Matthew’s damage on Haiti will not be certain until response teams are able to access the most affected areas, but already official and eye-witness reports confirm the most devastating effects in the south of the country. Oxfam teams are mobilizing now to respond to local people most in need. 

Eighteen months of war has pushed Yemen to the brink of catastrophe and left millions of people running out of means of survival, warned Oxfam in a new report published today.

Every country in the world is experiencing an economic shock as a result of the Coronavirus crisis, and all governments must act now to protect their people from destitution. Unless dramatic action is taken to shore up the economies of developing countries, the crisis could push as many as half a billion people into poverty.

Following the release of the Integrated Food Security Classification (IPC) report for South Sudan today, Elysia Buchanan, Oxfam South Sudan’s Campaign Manager said: “Despite some improvement, the scale of hunger in South Sudan is still immense with an estimated six million people facing severe hunger. The recent floods, which affected nearly a million people, are having a devastating impact on vulnerable communities already worn out by years of conflict and now the arrival of swarms of locusts could make things worse for many others.

Climate-fuelled disasters were the number one driver of internal displacement over the last decade – forcing an estimated 20 million people a year from their homes. While no one is immune, it is overwhelmingly poor countries that are most at risk.

Responding to the announcement that COVAX has received more funding and is planning to accelerate its vaccine rollout, Oxfam International’s Head of Inequality Policy, Max Lawson, said: “More funding for COVAX and a quicker rollout of vaccines is a small piece of good news for developing countries struggling to get the doses they need, but at best fewer than a quarter of people in these countries will have been vaccinated by the end of the year."

Responding to the IMF Board of Governors’ approval of a Special Drawing Rights (SDR) allocation of $650 billion, Nadia Daar, Head of Oxfam International’s Washington DC Office, said: “New SDRs will bring much-needed liquidity to struggling developing countries without adding to their unsustainable debt burdens. Now that this historic SDR issuance has been approved, governments must work transparently and together with civil society to ensure these resources are used to rescue collapsing health services and bolster social protection, and to deliver a fair and climate just recovery.  

In response to the decision by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in the Grand Chamber’s first-ever climate-related cases (Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz and Others v. Switzerland, Duarte Agostinho and Others v. Portugal and Others, and Carême v. France), Evelien van Roemburg, Head of Oxfam’s European Union office said: “European judges have ruled that a government’s failure to do enough to reduce national greenhouse gas emissions violates its population’s human rights. This is a positive step and allows people to require their governments to put in place effective climate regulations and carbon budgets. But the judges did not challenge Switzerland’s decision to give itself almost three more decades to reach net zero emissions, even though people around the world are being harmed now by the climate crisis.”