Media Releases

Global humanitarian needs highest on record

November 30, 2022

In reaction to today’s UN 2023 Global Humanitarian Outlook report, revealing that 339 million people are in urgent need of humanitarian aid – the highest caseload in history – Oxfam’s Global Humanitarian Director, Marta Valdes Garcia said:

“One in every 23 people around the world –the equivalent of nearly half of the entire population of Europe– is now in urgent need of humanitarian aid. This news must be an immediate wake-up call.

“The humanitarian needs are outstripping the aid system’s ability to respond. We have to rethink not only how we try to meet those needs, but what the failures are of global systems that are leading to such rapidly growing inequality in the first place.

“Humanitarian aid is flatlining but, again, we’re seeing the UN appealing for even more resources, from the same pool of donors, to help even more desperate people trying to cope in crisis. Again, those most in need will receive only a pittance of what they are asking for.

“The global humanitarian system is already overwhelmed. We know that people are being made homeless, hungry and sick by climate change, conflict, poverty and inequality, and economic failures – but these are not isolated issues, they’re the same endemic crises.

“We must not wait any longer. We need a radical overhaul of how our global systems work, putting the dignity and rights of people in crisis first.

“We must both immediately respond to this unprecedented humanitarian need and find ways to change a runaway global financial system where the few are benefitting at the cost of the many. How can we have hundreds of new food and energy billionaires yet we cannot fund basic humanitarian needs to stop millions of people from starving?

“Donors must immediately meet the UN global humanitarian appeal to help save lives now. Funding to prevent disasters should have no strings attached; and to nip escalating crises in the bud, decisions and actions must be led by local communities themselves.

“National governments must also tackle the root causes of poverty and inequality that worsens the blow of disasters on those already suffering. One key way this can be done is by injecting resources into global public goods, from climate adaptation to social protection.

“There is already so much insight into what a new global system could be – at heart, by tackling global inequality, climate change and conflict, and focusing on local leadership. What is dismally lacking is the political courage.”

Notes to editors

Since 2016 Oxfam, together with 60+ INGOs, UN Agencies, and donor governments, has committed to putting communities and local leaders at the heart of humanitarian responses and to making the humanitarian system more efficient and effective. Together with 50+ NGOs we have signed this joint statement in reaction to this GHO report.

Learn more: Hunger in a Heating World

Oxfam supports partners and local government in responding to Cianjur Earthquake in Indonesia

November 28, 2022

Oxfam is supporting the Humanitarian Knowledge Hub (JMK) in responding to the earthquake which hit Cianjur and Sukabumi in Indonesia last week. The partners have started distributing basic sanitation kits to displaced people.

The earthquake has killed at least 323 people, damaged more than 62,628 buildings in Cianjur and around 443 others in Sukabumi and caused a major power outage across both districts.

“Nearly half a million people living on the main Indonesian island of Java have been impacted. Accessing the impacted area is difficult because a landslide has covered the main road. With the spirit of Local Humanitarian Leadership, Oxfam is supporting the local government in responding to the situation through our local partners who have been in the impacted area since 22 November 2022,” said Siti Khoirun Ni’mah, Head of Programme Management of Oxfam in Indonesia.

Oxfam is working closely with the Indonesian Women’s Coalition (KPI) Garut, one of the members of JMK, doing an immediate assessment of what people need most urgently to cope. Our assessment will focus especially on the needs of women, children and people with disabilities in the area.

Mike Verawati, the Director of KPI said:

“Many of the victims are women and children. Buildings suddenly collapsed, trapping many of them inside. We will act as fast as possible to help in rescue efforts now underway, and to provide aid and services to the most vulnerable people, who will be affected both physically and emotionally.”

JMK plans to provide 5,000 of the most vulnerable people with basic shelter and sanitation services, with equipment mobilised from its nearest warehouse in Kediri, East Java.

“Indonesia is prone to natural disasters, and this is another reminder that the humanitarian system needs always to be prepared, including with early warning systems, so we can minimize the impact on women and children who are always the most vulnerable to crises such as this,” added Verawati.

Notes to editors:

The Humanitarian Knowledge Hub (JMK) is a network of local humanitarian organizations in Indonesia which aims to share knowledge and collaboration in humanitarian sector.

JMK has conducted emergency responses since the eruption of Mount Agung Bali, Mount Merapi Yogyakarta, the Lombok earthquake, the Banjir Bandang Makassar, the Sunda Strait Tsunami, and the Central Sulawesi Tsunami and Liquification.

Reaction: Lawyers for Climate Action v Climate Change Commission verdict

November 23, 2022

The NZ Climate Action Network, a network of individual organisations that work together to tackle climate change, react to the Lawyers for Climate Action v Climate Change Commission verdict:

Cindy Baxter, Coal Action Network Aotearoa spokesperson said:

“What’s shocking in this decision is the Court’s ruling that the 1.5˚C warming limit in the Zero Carbon Act is not legally binding. We call on the government to change the Act accordingly, and on the Climate Change Commission to deliver advice as to how we get there, which it clearly has not done.

“The central issue in this court case is the creative accounting around emissions deployed by the New Zealand Government, an accounting system that makes our 2030 emissions reduction target look like a 50% cut when in fact it’s only 22%. We need more transparency around our accounting system.”

Christine Rose, Greenpeace senior agriculture campaigner said:

“This case has highlighted this government’s failure to actively protect the basic right of a safe and stable climate for all. Intensive dairying threatens this right, being to New Zealand what coal is to Australia and tar sands are to Canada. If this Government is serious about tackling the climate crisis, it must do what we already know will cut climate pollution from intensive dairying: phase out synthetic nitrogen fertiliser, substantially reduce stocking rates, and support farmers to shift to more plant-based regenerative organic farming.”

Nick Henry, Oxfam Aotearoa climate justice lead said:

“The law may not have forced the government to act consistently with the science today, but ultimately, the science will force us to act or suffer the consequences. Emissions must be cut in half globally, quickly, to avoid devastating impacts on all of humanity.  

“We can only limit the worst impacts of climate destruction – the impact to homes, to the food we grow, and the places we love – if we take action at the scale necessary to keep global heating to within 1.5 degrees.

Dr Jim Salinger, Wise Response Society deputy chair said:

“We know that climate change is here. What was a river delta and the breadbasket of Pakistan is now a lake; a third of the country is under water and millions of people are displaced. Closer to home, Nelson has suffered one-in-a-hundred-year flooding accompanied by slips, erosion, wastewater pollution, and losses of hundreds of homes and other infrastructure that will take decades to fix.

“Dangerous climate extremes will continue to become more frequent and more extreme with each fraction of a degree the mean global surface temperature rises. New Zealand has committed to doing its part to mitigate climate change. This means real action to cut emissions, across all sectors of society, and it means calculating our carbon budgets using internationally respectable accounting methods.”

Together, these organisations call on the government to revise its emissions budgets in line with the science, and to urgently bring in the following policies to cut emissions: 

A proper price on agricultural emissions that will reduce pollution in line with the science of 1.5°C 
A significant reduction in synthetic nitrogen fertiliser use and a $1 billion investment in regenerative, organic farming   
No new fossil fuel vehicles by 2030, and free public transport for community service cardholders, under 25s and tertiary students 
Ending new oil, coal and gas exploration on Aotearoa soil and seas or extensions of current permits.

Women and girls “expendable” in misguided slash-and-burn policies of economic recovery

November 22, 2022

Oxfam: Austerity measures and their gendered harms are a form of gender-based violence

Governments around the world are putting women and girls in danger of unprecedented new levels of poverty, peril, overwork and premature death as a result of near-universal “slash-and-burn” efforts to recover their economies from the pandemic and tame inflation.

A new Oxfam report today, “The Assault of Austerity”, says that four out of every five governments are now locked into austerity measures, cutting public services like health, education and social protection rather than pursuing wealth taxes and windfall taxes. More than half of these government already fail their women and girls, by failing to provide or barely providing gendered public and social services. They are treating women and girls as expendable.

“Women carry most of the physical, emotional and psychological consequences of these cuts to crucial public services because they rely on them most. The road to post-pandemic recovery is being built upon the lives and sweated labour and security of women and girls,” said Oxfam Head of Gender Justice and Gender Rights, Amina Hersi. “Austerity is a form of gender-based violence.”

Austerity is not inevitable, it is a choice: governments can continue to cause harm by cutting public services, or they could raise taxes on those who can afford it. A progressive wealth tax on the world’s millionaires and billionaires can raise almost $1 trillion more than governments are planning to save through cuts in 2023.

Recent reports from UN agencies show that women and girls are already living in dire situations and Oxfam believes that austerity policies are contributing to:

More women and girls joining the 1.7 billion who are already now living below the poverty line of $5.50 a day;
Baking in the unequal “return to work” rate of women, who between 2019-22 captured only 21 percent of all projected employment gains, with many of those jobs becoming ever more exploitative and precarious;
Women being foisted with yet more responsibility for care, even as they already worked an additional 512 billion unpaid hours in 2020;
Women and girls facing even more difficulty to get clean water – the lack of which already kills 800,000 of them each year – along with affordable food, given the sharp rises in costs;
More violence, even as one in every 10 women and girls faced sexual and physical violence from an intimate partner in the past year. To squeeze budgets during lockdown, 85 percent of countries shut their emergency services for survivors of gender-based violence, according to a UNDP review.

With more than 85 percent of the world’s population projected to live under austerity measures in 2023, this already horrific situation will get worse, even as governments’ priorities are clearly elsewhere: 2 percent of what governments spend on military is enough to end interpersonal gender-based violence in 132 countries.

“Austerity policies blend patriarchy and neoliberal ideology to further exploit the most oppressed within society and deliberately dismiss their needs,” said Hersi.

“It is not just a gendered policy, it is also a gendered process in its ‘everydayness’ – the way it permeates the daily lives of women specifically, in their incomes, their care responsibilities, their ability to access services as essential as health, water, and transportation, and in their overall safety and freedom from physical violence in the home, at work, and on the street,” Hersi said.

The report shows that women are impacted by cuts to services, social protection and infrastructure twice: first directly, through rising prices or loss of jobs; and then indirectly, because they are made society’s ‘shock absorbers’ and expected to survive and take care of everyone when the state steps back. For example, despite the terrible impact of food price inflation, and with more than 60 percent of the world’s hungry being women, the IMF told nine countries, including Cameroon, Senegal and Surinam, to introduce or increase value-added tax which often applies to everyday products including food.

The report says that governments are pursuing their economic policies in a vacuum of gendered data. Less than half the data needed to monitor the fifth Sustainable Development Goal to achieve gender equality is currently available. Only about 35 percent of reported health-related data is segregated by gender, and the data is even scarcer for non-binary and queer people who are almost invisible in data collection and surveying.

“This absence of systemic data about the economic violence being perpetrated upon women and LGBTQIA+ people means that governments are making their economic decisions in the dark,” Hersi said.

“Women are being gaslit by a false choice between the state either providing social and public services or repaying debt and attracting investment and growth. It doesn’t have to be,” Hersi said. Governments should adopt human-centred, feminist economic policy choices to tackle inequalities and support the wellbeing of marginalised gender, racial and ethnic groups across all countries, the report says.

Oxfam calls all governments to end austerity and instead seek alternatives such as feminist budgeting and progressive taxation, where taxes are invested into universal social protection and public services, putting the specific needs of women, girls, and non-binary people at the heart of policy making. It calls for decent work through the full implementation of the International Labour Organisation’s labour standards, including particularly for women in the informal and care economies.

Oxfam calls on the IMF to stop pushing painful, failed austerity measures, and to suspend austerity-based conditionality on all its existing loan programmes. It also calls on rich countries to urgently advance debt cancellation and debt-free financing for lower income countries.

NOTES TO EDITOR

Download the report: The Assault of Austerity

The #EndAusterity campaign#EndAusterity campaign launched during the End Austerity Festival on 28 September 2022.Organisations participating in the #EndAusterity Campaign include: Oxfam, the European Network on Debt and Development (Eurodad), Red Latinoamericana por Justicia Económica y Social – Latindadd, Financial Transparency Coalition, Arab Watch Coalition, The Bretton Woods Project, Global Social Justice, Action Aid International, WEMOS, Ibon International, the Fight Inequality Alliance, Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR), Third World Network, INESC-Brazil, Equidad de Género: Ciudadanía, Trabajo y Familia, and the Campaign of Campaigns.

Just a quarter of Pfizer’s COVID-19 treatment orders will go to developing countries

November 21, 2022

Some nations could be paying ten times the price of Paxlovid’s generic equivalent, as WHO chief calls for treatment access to battle acute and long COVID-19

Rich countries have secured almost three times as many courses of a World Health Organisation (WHO)-recommended COVID-19 medicine, Pfizer’s Paxlovid, according to new analysis from Oxfam and the People’s Vaccine Alliance.

Using new data from Airfinity, they found that just a quarter of orders for the treatment will go to low- and middle-income countries, despite the fact they make up 84 per cent of the world’s population and have a much greater need as far fewer people are vaccinated against COVID, unlike rich nations which are largely protected.

On the eve of crunch talks at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) over intellectual property rules for COVID-19 treatments and tests, the organisations are warning that we are seeing the same worrying trend of inequity that we saw with COVID vaccines.

Pfizer’s monopoly also means that some middle-income countries could be paying ten times more for Paxlovid than a generic equivalent, with reports of them being quoted as much as US$250 per course. This is despite the fact that other lower-income countries will have access to a Clinton Health Initiative (CHAI) deal with Pfizer and undisclosed generic companies, which means they could access the treatment for just US$25 a course.

Dr. Catherine Kobutungi, Executive Director of the African Population and Health Research Center said: “When vaccines were our main medical tool to fight COVID-19, big pharmaceutical companies prioritized maximizing their profits by selling doses to the richest countries. Millions died while people in low- and middle-income countries were sent to the back of the vaccine queue. And now, we are witnessing a repetition of the same inequity with COVID-19 treatments and tests.”

“Oral antiviral treatments are easy to administer. They reduce hospitalisation and cut deaths. And they may reduce the likelihood of long COVID. Yet, right now, they’re nearly exclusively accessible to people in the richest countries. The fact is that if you are a vulnerable person with COVID-19 in a high-income country, you will probably have access to treatments that can help you survive. If you live in a lower-income country, you probably won’t. It’s grotesque inequality and it kills”, she added.

The WHO recommends using Paxlovid to cut COVID-19 hospitalisation and death rates, and has called for equitable global access to COVID-19 medicines as part of a strategy to combat long COVID. A recent, non-reviewed study suggests that Paxlovid may lower the risk of patients developing long COVID.

There are hundreds of other potential COVID-19 medicines in the development pipeline, including at least 77 in late-stage clinical trials that could be more effective and have a wider scope of use. However, intellectual property rules are giving a small number of companies a monopoly on supply, allocation, and price, meaning low- and middle-income countries are unlikely to have affordable access to these medicines either.

Because far fewer people in low-income countries are vaccinated than in rich countries, they are more vulnerable to hospitalisation and death from COVID-19. These countries have already experienced the highest death toll in the pandemic, a trend that could continue without access to treatments like Paxlovid.

Jennifer Reid, Senior Health and Vaccine Equity Advisor at Oxfam, said: “After the inequity they faced with the vaccine rollout, developing countries are now experiencing access and affordability issues for COVID treatments. It is a disgrace that those who need them the most are receiving the least and that patent laws are handing Pfizer a long monopoly on this lifesaving medicine.

“Addressing both acute and long COVID is essential – and the WHO has been clear that countries need treatments like Paxlovid to cut deaths and hospitalisations. But the patents minefield is a massive barrier preventing many developing countries from getting the medicines and tests they need now and in the future to save lives.”

In June, after a year and a half of negotiations, the WTO rejected proposals to waive intellectual property rules for all COVID-19 medical technologies, adopting a far more limited text that only covers vaccines. Ahead of talks taking place tomorrow in Geneva, civil society organizations are urging WTO member states to immediately agree to an extension to include treatments and tests, which would allow developing countries to produce for their own populations and export for others in need, ensuring essential tools are accessible and affordable.

Mohga Kamal Yanni, Policy Co-Lead for the People’s Vaccine Alliance, said: “Decades ago, governments allowed pharmaceutical companies to control the price, allocation, and supply of lifesaving HIV medicines – and millions of people died without affordable access. Now, the same thing is happening again with COVID-19 vaccines and medicines. Companies have been allowed to decide who lives and who dies. WTO member states must ensure that public health takes precedence over commercial interest.”

Notes to editors

A new briefing note from the People’s Vaccine Alliance on the case for the extension of the WTO ministerial decision to therapeutics and diagnostics is available here.

Data from Airfinity shows that the richest countries who account for just 16 per cent of the world’s population will receive 74 per cent of all courses ordered of Paxlovid. Low- and middle-income countries who make up 84 per cent of the world’s population will receive just 26 per cent. Despite being first authorised in December 2021, reports suggest that few doses are available to people in low and middle-income countries.

While there is little data available on how many doses of Pfizer’s antiviral treatment have actually been delivered to low and middle-income countries, they have been waiting for months to receive doses through Paxlovid supply agreements from global initiatives like UNICEF and the Global Fund. Pfizer has allegedly insisted that the prices in these agreements remain secret, and the initiatives have not revealed the prices Pfizer charges for courses through their agreements.

Allocation to high-income vs low- and middle-income countries

Proportion of agreed allocation to high-income vs low- and middle-income countries

Source: Airfinity, a life sciences analytics company

High-income countries (%)

Low- and middle-income countries (%)

Pfizer: Ritonavir-Boosted Nirmatrelvir (Paxlovid)

31,828,000

(74%)

11,221,666

(26%)

Data note: These figures reflect deals agreed with Pfizer. There are a number of generic manufacturers expected to produce Paxlovid that have signed agreements through the Medicines Patent Pool. However, these agreements are not expected to be producing/exporting finished drug products at scale until early 2023.

According to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), there are at least 1,465 patents on treatments and 417 on vaccines for COVID-19, making it a “minefield” for developing countries to navigate.
Two years ago, South Africa and India proposed a waiver of the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement for medical technologies relevant to COVID-19, including vaccines, tests, and treatments. The waiver was supported by more than 100 low- and middle-income countries but was blocked by a small number of rich countries including the EU, UK, and Switzerland.
After 18 months, the WTO finally decided in June 2022 to streamline existing rights to use compulsory licenses to produce generic COVID-19 vaccines for domestic use and for export without the patent holder’s permission. The June decision required member states to reach a decision on tests and treatments by December 2022. Negotiations to reach a decision on tests and treatments are ongoing. The WTO TRIPS council next meets on Tuesday 22 November.
A selection of letters that have gone to WTO member states, urging them to support extending the June decision to cover treatments and tests, is available here: https://app.box.com/s/bhbiggkwj44miwi6fhppg6eebk32ofh6n
Fulfillment of UNICEF’s Paxlovid order has reportedly been delayed for months: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02939-7
A Global Fund deal for Paxlovid was only finalized in late September: https://www.theglobalfund.org/en/news/2022/2022-09-22-the-global-fund-signs-agreement-with-pfizer-to-expand-access-to-paxlovid-antiviral/
Pfizer allegedly pressured UNICEF to keep Paxlovid pricing secret: https://genevahealthfiles.substack.com/p/pfizer-allegedly-pressured-unicef
According to BIO’s COVID-19 Therapeutic Development Tracker, there are 77 antivirals and treatments in “late stage clinical” phase as of Nov 14: https://www.bio.org/policy/human-health/vaccines-biodefense/coronavirus/pipeline-tracker
Pharmaceutical companies claim that licensing agreements and donations announced in recent months will ensure doses reach lower-income countries, but these agreements exclude many developing countries, particularly in Latin America. This is despite Latin America accounting for a significant portion of the world’s estimated preventable COVID-19 deaths. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)02796-3/fulltext
Four times as many people have died due to COVID-19 in lower-income countries than in rich countries. Deaths per capita in low- and lower-middle-income countries are almost a third higher than high income countries: https://www.oxfam.org.uk/media/press-releases/covid-death-toll-four-times-higher-in-poorer-countries-than-rich-countries/

According to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), there are at least 1,465 patents on treatments and 417 on vaccines for COVID-19: https://www.wipo.int/edocs/pubdocs/en/wipo-pub-1075-en-covid-19-related-vaccines-and-therapeutics.pdf

Loss and damage fund at COP27 a monumental win, if properly funded

November 21, 2022

Responding to the final communiqué of the COP27 climate talks in Sharm El-Sheikh, Gabriela Bucher, Oxfam International’s Executive Director, said:

“The establishment of a loss and damage fund is a monumental achievement for vulnerable developing countries and communities at the frontlines of the climate crisis. They have been calling for funding to cope with the devastating impacts of climate change for over 30 years.

“Given the urgency on the ground, the fund must be operationalised as soon as possible. Rich countries largely responsible for warming our planet should immediately mobilise substantial new and additional resources to pay for climate-related damage in vulnerable countries.

“In East Africa, nearly 40 million people are experiencing climate-induced hunger. Recent catastrophic floods in Pakistan have inflicted more than US$30 billion in damages and economic losses and left 10 to 12 percent of the country’s land area under water, affecting more than 33 million people. The list of extreme weather events and disasters is growing, as are the devastating impacts on communities.

“While we applaud the establishment of the loss and damage fund, we remain deeply concerned about countries’ failure to agree on an equitable and urgent phase-out of all fossil fuels. The world is on track for a catastrophic 2.8°C of warming.

“Rich countries, especially the US and those in the EU, have failed to use their power and resources to meet their fair share of responsibility and their moral and legal obligations. Rich countries and many middle-income countries that have the ability to do so are not transitioning away from fossil fuels fast enough to keep warming below 1.5°C, leading to more losses, damages and suffering. Rich countries are not providing the necessary finance to support developing countries to leapfrog to renewable energy.

“Rich countries have broken their US$100 billion climate finance promise and successfully blocked language at COP27 that would have required them to compensate for earlier shortfalls through increased climate finance in subsequent years. Climate finance is needed in the trillions for adaptation and mitigation. Given their responsibility for the climate crisis, rich countries at least could have provided a clear roadmap on how to deliver the US$600 billion they had promised between 2020 and 2025.

“We are also dismayed by the discussions to enhance the Gender Action Plan, which was at the heart of the UNFCCC processes for gender-responsive climate action. Gender was only marginally mentioned, if at all, in the climate talks’ decisions.

“The climate crisis is about inequality and injustice. Communities at the frontlines of the climate crisis are bearing the heaviest brunt of climate-induced disasters, in addition to multiple crises including conflict, loss of livelihoods, and economic shocks. World leaders must push political differences aside and put the needs of these communities first.”