By Gabriela Bucher, Executive Director of Oxfam International
Just imagine, looking back to a time when COVID-19 brought us together.
Leaders who united to overcome a health crisis also gained the courage to avert climate catastrophe. The unstoppable global movements of #BlackLivesMatter, #MeToo, #NiUnaMenos, climate strikers, workers, more, realized their calling. As they inevitably always would. Poverty fell. Ceasefires held. Politics became a process for dialogue not division. Out of the ashes of neoliberalism a new human economy was born.
That’s the hope.
Perhaps, instead, years from now we will recall how post-2020 saw the deepening of already terrifying trends…
By Gabriela Bucher, Executive Director of Oxfam International
Land and environmental defenders, the everyday guardians of our world’s fragile ecosystems, commonly face harassment, illegal surveillance, blackmail, sexual assault, forced disappearances and murder. More than four defenders were killed every week in 2019 — the deadliest year on record — and scores more were silenced by threats, violent attacks, bogus criminal charges and smear campaigns.
Now, COVID-19 has made protecting their homes and fighting for a fair future for us all and our planet ever-more difficult and dangerous.
Last year alone, at least eight defenders have been killed and disappeared in…
By: Barbara Oosters; policy lead civic space at Oxfam Novib.
Oxfam’s recently published report, ‘The Inequality Virus’ outlined that the pandemic has exposed, fed off and increased existing inequalities of wealth, gender and race. Over two million people have died, and hundreds of millions of people are being forced into poverty while many of the richest — individuals and corporations — are thriving.
Extreme inequality is not inevitable, but a policy choice. Exposure of gross corruption, failing health systems or a looming hunger crisis amidst the COVID-19 pandemic needs voices that challenge specific policy choices, speak truth to power and…
By: Gabriela Bucher, Oxfam International Executive Director
We are longing for hope.
Were we not lifted around the world listening to the poetry of Amanda Gorman at the recent Presidential inauguration in the United States? “For there is always light. If only we’re brave enough to see it. If only we’re brave enough to be it” she told us.
I feel hope listening to women like Hindou Ibrahim, an indigenous leader and member of the Mbororo people in Chad making people rethink their relationship with nature and fighting climate breakdown.
I think of countless people around the world giving us…
By: Ngarra Murray
A year after the World Health Organization first declared COVID-19 a global health emergency, we are nearing 100,000,000 cases and over 2,100,000 coronavirus deaths. And while the coronavirus can wreak havoc on anyone, anywhere, there is nothing equal about the impact that COVID-19 has had on marginalized populations.
Oxfam’s recently published report, ‘The Inequality Virus’, shows that the coronavirus has exposed, fed off and increased existing inequalities of wealth, gender and race.
Across the globe, we have seen that the virus has disproportionately impacted those already made vulnerable by systematic racism and other intersectional injustices — and…
By Siham Rayale
A year after the World Health Organization first declared COVID-19 a global health emergency, we are nearing 100,000,000 cases and over 2,100,000 coronavirus deaths. And while the coronavirus can wreak havoc on anyone, anywhere, there is nothing equal about the impact that COVID-19 has had on marginalized populations.
Oxfam’s recently published report, ‘The Inequality Virus’, shows that the coronavirus has exposed, fed off and increased existing inequalities of wealth, gender and race.
Across the globe, we have seen that the virus has disproportionately impacted those already made vulnerable by systematic racism and other intersectional injustices — and…
By Tauá Pires- Youth, Gender and Race Coordinator at Oxfam Brasil.
A year after the World Health Organization first declared COVID-19 a global health emergency, we are nearing 100,000,000 cases and over 2,100,000 coronavirus deaths. And while the coronavirus can wreak havoc on anyone, anywhere, there is nothing equal about the impact that COVID-19 has had on marginalized populations.
Oxfam’s recently published report, ‘The Inequality Virus’, shows that the coronavirus has exposed, fed off and increased existing inequalities of wealth, gender and race.
Across the globe, we have seen that the virus has disproportionately impacted those already made vulnerable by systematic racism and other intersectional injustices — and the dangers of…
By Mwanahamisi Singano — Head of Programmes, FEMNET
When I read Oxfam’s report The Inequality Virus, I felt anguish and anger, but also, I had that urge to scream from the top of my voice, telling the world, and the world leaders, “We told you” I mean, over and over again, activists, feminists and academics have said, we need to end inequality, the current, capitalist model backed by neoliberal policies is making the world a bad place for human survival and environment sustainability, but they never listen. …
By Chema Vera, Executive Director (interim), Oxfam International
People turned away at the gates of hospitals, unable to afford life-saving treatment.
Girls struggling to go back to school.
Hundreds of millions of people being pushed into poverty.
The blast-range of today’s pandemic has been so much more terrifying than what we could have imagined.
This week the Finance Ministers of the richest countries in the world — the G20 countries — will meet for an extraordinary meeting focused on what the pandemic has pushed to the top of the global political agenda: the debt crisis in…
More than five hundred of the world’s leading charities, social groups and academics have sent a letter to the International Monetary Fund warning that its support programs, which have had to be ramped up to cope with COVID-19, were condemning many countries to years of austerity.
We, the undersigned, call on the IMF to immediately stop promoting austerity around the world, and instead advocate policies that advance gender justice, reduce inequality, and decisively put people and planet first.
As those who care about governments’ ability to fulfil human rights and advance progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals, we express the utmost alarm at the IMF’s advice for countries to return to austerity once the current crisis recedes. This pandemic has laid bare the deadly repercussions of systematically weak investments in health, education and social protection, hardest felt by marginalized populations including women, older people, racial and…
Oxfam International
Oxfam is a world-wide development organization that mobilizes the power of people against poverty.
