Media Releases

Popular NZ fashion brands get 5 star rating from Oxfam

November 17, 2022

Today Oxfam Aotearoa launched the world-famous campaign, What She Makes. The campaign is about asking fashion brands to pay the women overseas who make our clothes a living wage.

Oxfam Aotearoa engaged with four New Zealand founded brands, Glassons, Hallenstein Bros, Kathmandu and Macpac, and two international brands H&M and Lululemon. Today Oxfam released the results of the first step in the process: a credible commitment towards paying workers in their supply chain a living wage.

Glassons, Hallenstein Bros, and Macpac came out on top with a 5 star rating. H&M received 4 stars, Lululemon received 3 stars and New Zealand brand Kathmandu received 2.5 stars.

Oxfam Aotearoa’s What She Makes Lead Tracy Decena said:

“We want to create a race to the top between fashion brands – starting with a real, credible public commitment towards paying the women overseas who make their clothes a living wage. It’s encouraging to see New Zealand founded brands leading the race. Even though some brands did better than others, we want to acknowledge that every brand made some progress. Yet, there is much more to be done, and you can bet we’ll be there supporting and pushing these brands towards the end goal.

“The women making our clothes often work up to 12 hours a day and then extra overtime, but because they make as little as 65 cents an hour, they don’t have enough money for decent housing, food or healthcare – let alone any savings. We are working to change this.

“We encourage our supporters, fashion lovers, and anyone who believes poverty can be a thing of the past to join us by signing the pledge and demanding fashion brands to do better.”

The What She Makes Brand Tracker

For rating and rationale head to https://www.oxfam.org.nz/what-she-makes-brand-tracker/

Our ask of New Zealanders

Oxfam Aotearoa will be asking Kiwis to let brands know they want them to do better, and to stand with the women who make their clothes. They can start by joining the campaign and signing the pledge through: https://www.oxfam.org.nz/what-she-makes-sign-the-pledge/.

Our ask of the brands

The What She Makes campaign calls on clothing brands that sell clothes here in Aotearoa New Zealand to make sure the garment workers in their supply chains are paid a living wage. Oxfam Aotearoa will work with six brands: Glassons, Hallenstein Brothers, H&M, Kathmandu, Lululemon, and Macpac. We asked them to take the first step of their living wage journeys: commit to paying workers in their supply chain a living wage. We’ll work with the brands to get them to there, and publish their progress (or lack of progress) regularly.

Oxfam reaction: NZ wins Fossil of the Day award at COP27

November 15, 2022

Climate Action Network International has awarded the New Zealand government the Fossil of the Day award at COP27 for opposing an agreement to establish a loss and damage finance facility this year.

This comes less than a week after the Government repurposed $20 million of its existing climate finance for adaptation and mitigation, for loss and damage.

Oxfam Aotearoa’s climate justice lead Nick Henry said:

“This is one award not to be proud of. Our government blocking urgently needed action on loss and damage is frankly not what we expect from a government that says it’s at the leading edge of loss and damage funding.

“Our government should be standing with Pacific nations at COP27 who are calling for a global fund to address the loss and damage they are experiencing due to climate change. This is a global problem that communities on the frontlines are experiencing right now. A decision is needed now, not in a year.”

Oxfam in the Pacific’s project coordinator in Vanuatu George Koran says that it is indigenous communities who suffer from rich governments’ inaction:

“We see the impacts of climate destruction across the Pacific, in Vanuatu and now even in Aotearoa. People in the most vulnerable situations, those who do not have the capacity to adapt, suffer the consequences. The New Zealand Government say they understand the urgent need for loss and damage funds, and yet, we are not seeing any real action. It’s like robbing Peter to pay Paul – we need new and additional funding from our neighbours to fight this crisis.”

Henry said: “We call on the New Zealand Government to back-up their acknowledgement that loss and damage needs funding by supporting a new loss and damage finance facility. This will help ensure that finance to address loss and damage is accessible and sustained and is delivered in accordance with the principles of climate justice. New Zealand can pledge our $20 million allocation to the new facility.”

ENDS

G20 must tackle the “cost of profit” crisis causing chaos worldwide, says Oxfam

November 14, 2022

G20 countries are receiving US$136 million every day in debt repayments from the world’s poorest countries at a time when up to 828 million people are facing hunger.

The “cost of living” crisis is more accurately a “cost of profit” crisis – of rising billionaire wealth and corporate mega-profits – that is driving up poverty, hunger, indebtedness and deprivation around the world, Oxfam says, as the G20 Summit begins in Bali.

“If the G20 are serious about tackling this looming global economic catastrophe they need to put their own houses in order. That’s where the real cause of this crisis lies,” said Oxfam’s G20 Lead Joern Kalinski.

“In reality we are facing a ‘cost of profit’ crisis. The richest are getting richer, while ordinary families and the poorest countries are being squeezed dry,” said Kalinski.

Since the start of the pandemic, poor countries have had to shell out US$113 billion to their rich G20 country creditors, during a time that four times more people died of Covid in poorer nations than in rich ones.

In 2021, on average, poor countries were forced to spend 27.5 percent of their budgets on debt repayment – four times more than on health and 12 times more than on social protection. Even the public climate finance they are getting from rich nations, including many in the G20, are 71 percent loans.

Meanwhile the G20’s biggest corporations are making record profits. BP made £7.1 billion, their biggest profits in 14 years, and BNP Paribas € 2.76 billion in just the past three months. Nine out of ten of the biggest fossil fuel companies are headquartered in G20 countries. US corporations are seeing their biggest profit margins since 1950 and have been accused of ‘greedflation’; driving higher inflation through price hikes.

The G20 is home now to 89 percent of all the billionaire wealth in the world – at around US$10 trillion. This has grown by US$1.88 trillion, creating 287 newly-minted pandemic billionaires, since 2020. Energy and food billionaires are currently getting richer by a half-a-billion dollars a day.

Oxfam urges the G20 to acknowledge the consequences that this shocking inequality is visiting on ordinary citizens the world over in the form of mass hunger, death and worsening poverty.

In Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya historic levels of drought mean that one person will likely die of hunger every 36 seconds between now and the end of the year as the worst-hit areas hurtle towards famine. Women and girls, who are often the main food producers, primary caregivers, and stewards of household nutrition, are at higher risk of hunger.

The Ukraine war is an additional layer to existing problems. While 828 million people face hunger, the world’s main food traders made record profits and food and agribusiness billionaires increased their collective wealth by US$382 billion (45 percent) over the past two years. The United Nations has appealed for US$17.1 billion in humanitarian food security assistance for 2022 but so far donors have only given US$7 billion.

Globally progress in fighting poverty has halted, according to the World Bank, with poverty increasing during COVID-19 for the first time in decades. Inequality has grown too; with the poorest seeing their incomes decline twice as much as the richest.

“Austerity is the exact wrong reaction – a textbook blunder – that is ripping away social safety nets and beating people down into poverty,” Kalinski said.

Recent Oxfam research on inequality shows that despite the worst health crisis in a century, half of all poor countries have cut their share of health spending. Almost half of all countries cut their budget share going to social protection, 70 percent cut their share going to education and two-thirds failed to raise their minimum wage in line with economic growth. Over the next five years, three-quarters of all countries globally are planning further cuts totaling US$7.8 trillion dollars.

143 of 161 countries Oxfam surveyed froze tax rates on their richest citizens, and 11 countries even lowered them. Corporate tax dodging also continues on an industrial scale with an estimated one trillion dollars of corporate profits shifted to tax havens in 2019.

The G20 must tackle the root causes of hunger: extreme inequality and poverty, human rights violations, conflict, climate change and food and energy price inflation. Oxfam says the G20 must develop an economic and social rescue plan that protects the rights of the poorest people and tackles extreme inequality. This means:

Championing systematic strategies to tackle inequality and monitoring progress by rejecting austerity, boosting inequality-busting public spending, making tax more progressive, and increasing workers’ rights and pay
Widescale debt relief and significant debt cancellation for the poorest countries
Increasing taxes on windfall profits, wealth and corporations
Issuing more Special Drawing Rights, and allocating more to the poorest countries
Boosting inequality-busting aid
Delivering on climate finance, especially for the most vulnerable countries
Committing to enhancing pandemic preparedness and building more resilient systems.

To halt the worsening hunger crises the G20 must:

Urgently mobilise financial resources into humanitarian emergencies
Address the root causes of hunger crises including climate change, conflict, poverty and inequality, human rights violations and food price inflation
Ensure that blockades, economic sanctions and military activities in all countries do not hinder the free, safe and reliable transport of food and agricultural supplies, especially in conflict-affected areas
Rebalance the power in food supply chains to create a more sustainable and just food system.

Notes

“G20 countries are receiving US$136 million every day in debt repayments from the world’s poorest countries”: Oxfam calculations based on World Bank International Debt Statistics database: Principal repayments plus interests paid by low and lower-middle income countries to G20 countries in 2022 divided by 365 days.
“Since the start of the pandemic, poor countries have had to shell out US$113 billion to their rich G20 country creditors”: Oxfam calculations based on World Bank International Debt Statistics database: Sum of principal repayments plus interests paid by low and lower-middle income countries to G20 countries in 2020, 2021 and 2022.
“The G20 is home now to 89 percent of all the billionaire wealth in the world – at around US$10 trillion. This has grown by US$1.88 trillion, creating 287 newly-minted pandemic billionaires, since 2020”: Oxfam calculations based on Forbes billionaire list from 18 March 2020 and 31 October 2022.

Investigation reveals big pharma’s lobbying against COVID-19 intellectual property waiver

November 11, 2022

An investigation by Politico and The Bureau for Investigative Journalism has revealed that:

Pharmaceutical companies threatened to withdraw investment from countries including Indonesia, Colombia and Belgium if they supported an intellectual property waiver for COVID-19 vaccines, tests, and treatments. Colombian officials in Geneva were told by their government that supporting the waiver might disrupt vaccine negotiations with Pfizer and others.
Top pharmaceutical industry executives enjoyed direct access to senior officials within the EU, which was opposed to a waiver, and encouraged potentially rogue member countries, including Italy and France, to fall into line.
The German government pressured fellow EU governments to oppose the TRIPS waiver, and when concerns were raised about how the EU waiver opposition looked to the rest of the world, Germany proposed that this could be managed with “smart communication on the topic” that “underlines the proactive role of the EU in providing vaccines globally.”
When it became clear to the US business lobby that they could not affect the US position in support of an intellectual property waiver, the industry looked to Europe and the UK, which they saw as more receptive. As negotiations ramped up, the US Chamber of Commerce and US pharmaceutical lobbyists including the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) and the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO) met the European Commission to lobby against the waiver. The UK’s biotech lobby met with George Freeman, a science minister, “to discuss intellectual property and the life sciences sector.”
Between January 2020 and September 2022, 13 pharmaceutical lobby groups and companies held nearly 100 meetings with the most senior European Commission officials. In the U.K., there were more than 360 meetings between January 2020 and March 2022 — equivalent to nearly one every two days. Boris Johnson personally attended 11 of them.
In the EU during 2021, COVID vaccine and treatment developers including Pfizer and Moderna and the largest pharma lobbying groups, including the EFPIA, spent at least €15 million on lobbying. The year before, the companies spent more than €15.7 million. In 2019, their lobbying costs were €13.9 million, according to data analyzed from LobbyFacts.
Major industry players also paid at least 31 private consultancies to lobby the Commission on their behalf. AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson each paid around €700,000 in 2021 for consultancies working on topics such as the EU vaccines policy and the bloc’s strategy for COVID-19.

Responding, Max Lawson, Co-Chair of the People’s Vaccine Alliance and Head of Inequality Policy at Oxfam, said:

“These shocking allegations are a testament to the huge unaccountable power of big business in global politics. Pharmaceutical companies were seemingly granted unfettered access to the European Commission and the British and German governments, while countries that supported measures to improve vaccine access faced threats from the industry. When US lobbyists couldn’t influence the US government, they turned to the EU and UK. This is not how life and death decisions should be made.

“Millions died without access to vaccines while pharmaceutical companies gouged extraordinary profits from the pandemic. Rich countries expressed warm words and pledged donations, but to Germany, the UK, Switzerland, and the European Commission, it was apparently just a PR exercise. In the end, global solidarity was snuffed out by the wealthy pharmaceutical lobby, which is not how a healthy democracy should function.

“There is, however, a glimmer of hope amid these revelations. The narrow outcome of TRIPS negotiations set an important precedent, recognising that intellectual property rules are a barrier to accessing medical tools. World Trade Organisation members are now deciding whether to extend the decision to cover tests and treatments. That could ensure that everyone, everywhere has access to lifesaving medical tools that reduce COVID-19 hospitalisations and death. While big pharma will once again use all of its lobbying might to protect its medical monopolies, governments must ensure this time that they put people’s lives before profits.”

Oxfam reacts to NZ Government’s biofuel obligation

November 9, 2022

The Government’s biofuel obligation risks doing more harm than good for the climate and global hunger, said Nick Henry, Climate Justice Lead at Oxfam Aotearoa:

“We welcome the decision to rule out the use of palm and soy oil and to limit the use of food and feed to produce biofuel. But this does not go far enough. As our recent briefing paper details, all crop-based biofuels contribute to the increasing levels of hunger across the world.

“Under a similar system in the EU, Europe is burning 17,000 tonnes of rapeseed and sunflower oil per day – the equivalent of 19 million 1L bottles every day – that could be used for food. What’s more, if the Government move ahead with its mandate, it will contribute to land use changes around the world which are extremely harmful to local communities and to the climate.

“Minister Woods is clearly committed to managing the impacts of transport on the environment. We acknowledge changes have been made to improve the biofuel obligation, but it is crucial Minister Woods goes further to reduce the serious harm a biofuels obligation can have on people and planet. The Government must rule out using any food crops and have strict standards to not only protect the environment, but also human rights.

“We look forward to working with the Government to inform and improve its approach to sustainable transport.”

/ENDS

Notes

Oxfam Aotearoa briefing paper on biofuels: https://www.oxfam.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Dont-Burn-Food-Policy-Briefing.pdf

According to the European Federation for Transport and Environment, 18 percent of the world’s vegetable oil production goes to biodiesel. Nearly all of this is fit for human consumption. In recent years, Europe put 58 percent of all rapeseed and 9 percent of all sunflower oil consumed in the region into its cars and trucks. See: https://www.transportenvironment.org/discover/food-vs-fuel-europe-burns-19-million-bottles-of-sunflower-and-rapeseed-oil-every-day-in-cars/

COP27: Oxfam reacts to NZ Government’s loss & damage announcement

November 9, 2022

Oxfam Aotearoa welcomes and congratulates the NZ government’s recognition that loss and damage exists and requires funding, but Jo Spratt, Communications and Advocacy Director says it still isn’t good enough:

“Sadly, this is not new funding. Instead, it is allocated from New Zealand’s existing climate finance, which is for adaptation and mitigation. Financing for loss and damage must be new and additional to adaptation, mitigation and overseas aid funding. There is a severe funding shortfall – countries are suffering irreversible damage in the climate crisis.

“To put it into perspective, last month Oxfam revealed that 55 of the most climate-vulnerable countries have suffered climate-induced economic losses totalling over half a trillion dollars during the first two decades of this century.

“While New Zealand is amongst the leading countries in providing dedicated funding for loss and damage, two further steps are necessary to clearly demonstrate our commitment to the Pacific. First, New Zealand must back-up this announcement by supporting a new loss and damage finance facility to help ensure that finance to address loss and damage is accessible and sustained and is delivered in accordance with the principles of climate justice. Second, New Zealand can pledge this $20 million allocation to the new facility.”

ENDS