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Rich countries must open the way to cheaper mass-produced COVID-19 vaccines in order to protect every person in the world and avert a $9 trillion “worst case” global economic catastrophe, said Oxfam today. They should also agree this week to inject $650 billion more into the global economy to help developing countries cope with the pandemic’s already devasting effects.

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.   

Today, a group of 83 millionaires from seven countries, the “Millionaires for Humanity”, released an open letter to governments, calling for a permanent tax increase on the very wealthiest to help pay for the global recovery from the COVID-19 crisis.

On the eve of President Biden’s global COVID-19 summit on the side-lines of the UN General Assembly, campaigners from the People’s Vaccine Alliance are calling for world leaders to go beyond empty promises of charity and deliver bold action to increase manufacturing and access to COVID-19 vaccines around the world.

The World Bank’s report shows clearly that billions of people were more vulnerable to the economic impacts of COVID-19 because of decades of economic policies which have kept them living one paycheck away from poverty, while the richest in society accumulate ever more wealth.

Very low spending on public healthcare, weak social safety nets and poor labor rights meant the majority of the world’s countries were woefully ill-equipped to deal with COVID-19, reveals new analysis from Oxfam and Development Finance International (DFI) today.

The political will that delivered the Millennium Development Goals is absent from today’s development debate, yet even bolder political leadership is needed if we are to achieve the new Sustainable Development Goals.

Increasing aid and making it more effective can help poor people become more politically active in decisions that affect them, while also supporting governments to become more accountable and plot their own path to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

Young people ages 15-24 account for a sixth of the global population, 1.2 billion people whose lives, educations, careers and communities will be forever transformed by Covid-19. So why are they not being included in policymaking decisions that will continue to affect their lives for generations to come?

More than 170 former heads of state and government and Nobel laureates, including former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Gordon Brown, former President of Colombia Juan Manuel Santos, former President of Liberia Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, former President of France François Hollande and Nobel Laureates Professor Joseph Stiglitz and Professor Francoise Barre-Sinoussi, today called on President Biden to support a waiver of intellectual property rules for COVID-19 vaccines and pursue a people’s vaccine to end the pandemic in an open letter today.