Media Releases

Emissions Reduction Plan reaction

May 17, 2022

Oxfam Aotearoa Campaigns Lead Alex Johnston said:

“While this plan starts to trend emissions downwards, we need to be slamming on the brakes, not slowly taking our foot off the accelerator.

“We acknowledge progress has been made to get all government departments to understand the task of tackling climate change, but there’s a failure to produce policies that will meaningfully reduce pollution from industrial agriculture – responsible for half our emissions.

“We’ve got another agriculture institute for developing new techno-fixes, but no real policies that will shift production systems away from intensive, volume-based dairy. The hidden consequence of this is paying billions of dollars to other countries – countries experiencing the worst impacts of the climate destruction we caused – to pick up our slack.

“When the world is required to halve emissions by 2030 to keep within 1.5 degrees, a wealthy country like New Zealand saying we’re only going to reduce them by 18 percent in that time is a death sentence for those set to experience the worst impacts of climate change.

“Going slow and steady is a decision that treat the lives of billions of people who are forced into hunger from climate fuelled drought, storms and displacement as expendable. Farmers in Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia have lost crops and entire herds of livestock to an exceptionally long and severe drought. Millions of people in East Africa are now on the brink of a hunger catastrophe.

“We know what’s needed to tackle emissions from agriculture: we need big dairy and beef to be brought into the Emissions Trading Scheme at a much stronger emissions price, and turn around the farming sector, from being Aotearoa’s biggest polluter, into a solution for tackling climate change and restoring nature. That involves a phase out of synthetic nitrogen fertiliser, and investing billions in organic, regenerative agriculture.”

Governments falling woefully short on goal to vaccinate 70 percent in each country by September

May 12, 2022

Vaccine Access Still a Concern as President Biden Hosts Second COVID Summit

World leaders have not done enough to achieve their goal of vaccinating 70 percent of people in each country by September, campaigners with the People’s Vaccine Alliance warned ahead of the second virtual summit on COVID-19 hosted by US President Biden along with Belize, Germany, Indonesia, and Senegal. The World Health Organization’s target of reaching 70 percent by mid-year is even further out of reach.

More than a year after vaccines were introduced, only 52 countries have met the 70 percent vaccination target so far, 69 have yet to achieve 40 percent coverage, and 21 countries have not yet achieved even 10 percent coverage. While more than 11 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered worldwide, only 11 percent of people in low-income countries are vaccinated, compared with 73 percent of those in high-income countries, as of last month. At the current rate, it will take another two and a half years for low-income countries to be able to vaccinate 70 percent of their populations with an initial two doses.

Campaigners said progress had been too slow since the first COVID-19 summit in September last year and called on governments to do more to ensure doses are getting to people in countries behind target. Too many still haven’t received enough supply, have had unpredictable access, and have faced other challenges delivering doses to people in need. Campaigners have also called for urgent action to redress the spiraling COVID-19 treatment access divide caused by the same rich country hoarding and profit-driven Big Pharma business model that excludes people living in poverty throughout the world.

Julia Kosgei, Policy Advisor to the People’s Vaccine Alliance said: “The donation model has failed to deliver vaccines, has thwarted effective vaccine roll out plans, and is completely unsustainable. More than two years into the pandemic, millions have yet to have the initial doses needed to protect them from this deadly disease.”

“How is it that my elderly grandma in rural Kenya is still unprotected from COVID, yet pharmaceutical companies are hitting unheard of profits and say the world is ‘swimming’ in doses? These corporations have repeatedly demonstrated that they are not willing to do the right thing for humanity. Governments must step in and ensure everyone; everywhere has the vaccines they need.”

The Alliance, a coalition of over 90 organizations including the African Alliance, Oxfam, and UNAIDS says that transferring technology to boost local manufacturing will help address ongoing concerns including on-the-ground distribution challenges, vaccine hesitancy, and an overall shortfall in doses.

For the past year and a half, countries have been discussing a widely supported waiver of intellectual property for COVID-19 vaccines (so-called TRIPS waiver) at the World Trade Organization (WTO), which would remove barriers to developing countries being able to produce their own doses of COVID-19 medical tools.

Despite President Biden’s declared backing of the waiver for vaccines, there has been little progress. In fact, the initiative is still being blocked by the European Union, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Instead, the EU has backed an alternative proposal, which is not a waiver and would not deliver the goals of the original proposal by excluding testing and treatments, leaving out many countries. Worse, it adds even more barriers to countries hoping to produce generic versions of the vaccines.

The Alliance is calling on President Biden to use his influence to ensure all world leaders back the full TRIPS waiver not only for vaccines, but also for test and treatments to give countries the protection and dignity of being able to produce COVID-19 medical tools themselves, rather than relying on a handful of Western pharmaceutical companies. The Alliance is also calling on increased funding for manufacturing and vaccine delivery.

Meanwhile, more than 100 qualified manufacturers in Asia, Africa and Latin America could be producing doses of the mRNA COVID vaccines, but this capacity is going unused without the cooperation and technology transfer from Pfizer, Moderna and BioNTech. At the Annual General Meetings of Pfizer and Moderna, the companies opposed shareholder proposals by Oxfam for each to study the feasibility of transferring vaccine technology to qualified manufacturers in low- and middle-income countries.

Anna Marriott, Oxfam’s Health Policy Manager, said: “At this second COVID Summit, we should be acting urgently on the key thing low- and middle-income countries are asking for: the ability to make their own vaccines for their own people.”

“The unwillingness to share the vaccine technology and funding shortfalls are stunting our global response to COVID-19. Governments, including the US, must step up funding for immediate vaccine roll out and for the mRNA hub and the manufacturing capacity needed to build a production network in the global South. This would reduce dependence on a failing charity model and allow the world to pull out of this pandemic once and for all.”

The Alliance also says the scale of the pandemic in developing nations has been massively underestimated due to the lack of testing available. Last week the World Health Organization estimated the true global death toll from the COVID pandemic to be almost 15 million lives lost, with a death toll in lower income countries four times higher than in high income countries.

Marriott continued: “Voluntary measures from companies have delivered wild profits but also persistent vaccine inequity, new waves and new variants, unreliable and insufficient donations, and billions of people still waiting for their tests, treatments and vaccines.”

“Enough is enough. It’s time for governments to take bolder action to put people before profits.”

Notes:

Latest estimates of vaccination rates are from Accelerating COVID-19 Vaccine Deployment: https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/accelerating-covid-19-vaccine-deployment
According to Our World in Data, low-income countries have administered 11,110,776 vaccines as of May 10, 2022, an average of 793,627 per day. Low-income countries would need 931,208,656 doses (assuming two doses) to fully vaccinate 70 percent of their population. 154,401,685 vaccines have been administered to date in low-income countries so there are 776,806,971 doses left to give to reach 70 percent. At the 14-day average it would therefore take 979 days or 2.7 years to fully vaccinate 70 percent of the populations of low-income countries.
A list of over 100 qualified vaccine manufacturers in Asia, Africa and Latin America has been compiled by the AccessIBSA project and Human Rights Watch: https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/12/15/experts-identify-100-plus-firms-make-covid-19-mrna-vaccines
The WHO’s mRNA hub has 15 manufacturing partners: https://medicinespatentpool.org/news-publications-post/who-and-mpp-announce-names-of-15-manufactures-to-receive-training-from-mrna-technology-transfer-hub
According to the WHO, the true global death toll from the pandemic is more likely to be almost 15 million people, or one in 500: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-05/covid-killed-about-1-out-of-every-500-people-who-report-shows

Poverty and extreme inequality worsen in southern Africa as COVID-19 battered countries embark on a dangerous austerity path

May 11, 2022

The COVID-19 pandemic has worsened the extreme inequality in Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries and pushed millions into poverty, reveals a new analysis from Oxfam, Norwegian Church Aid (NCA) and Development Finance International (DFI).

The Commitment to Reducing Inequality Index (CRI) report shows that the fifteen SADC member states lost about $80bn in 2020 due to lower-than-expected growth. which is equivalent to around $220 for every SADC citizen.

This analysis estimates that this economic crisis could take more than a decade to reverse, erasing all hope of countries meeting their national development plan targets to reduce poverty and inequality by 2030.

The organizations say that if countries act decisively now against inequality, with policies aimed to help support citizens with public services and support, the impact of the crisis could be reversed in just three years. However, the report finds that SADC countries have responded with belt-tightening measures that are likely to do more harm to people than good.

“The poorest in our societies are bearing the brunt of Covid-19 and are now facing the extra cost of austerity policies. Governments have a choice and must act now to reverse damage of the pandemic, increase social spending and tackle the inequality crisis”, says Felix Ngosa, senior programme officer in Norwegian Church Aid.

As many as 35.5 million people in SADC countries lost their jobs in 2020 due to the pandemic, down by 26% on 2019 employment numbers. The Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar and Tanzania were hardest hit, with over five million jobs lost in each country.

While the majority of SADC citizens have suffered from the pandemic and its effects, the story is different for the region’s wealthiest people. The six wealthiest men in SADC – four in South Africa and one each in Tanzania and Zimbabwe – saw their wealth expand from $18.1 billion to $27.7 during the two years of the pandemic, a 42% increase in real terms. This increase is more than enough to fund a full COVID vaccination program (plus a booster) for everyone in SADC. The richest 10% earn around or above 60% of national income in eight SADC countries, and 50% in the other seven, the report finds.

This wealth concertation by a small group of people has left a majority struggling to meet their most basic needs, such as quality education, healthcare and decent jobs.

“The findings of this analysis are shocking, but they confirm the reality of many countries in this natural resource-rich but poor and unequal region” says Dailes Judge, Oxfam in Southern Africa Programme Director. “The inequalities in most countries in the region are major drivers of reduced economic growth and weakened essential services such as quality healthcare and education”.

“Sadly, a majority of the people feeling the sting are the poor – those living in vulnerable conditions with little or no assets. Women- headed households represent a distressingly large proportion of those struggling and suffering.”

In 2021, with COVID-19 infections rising, the critical health, social protection and economic programs put in place by most governments in 2020 were rolled back and replaced with austerity policies, in the context of growing debt burdens and lack of external support for country budgets.

Governments have felt pressured by their increasing debt service payments to cut social spending. Even before the pandemic, debt servicing was reaching astronomical levels with SADC governments spending almost three times as much on domestic and external debt service as there were on health. In 2020–21, debt servicing took 42.2% of government revenues on average.

The report says that many Southern African Development Community (SADC) member governments are still showing considerable commitment to fighting inequality – but still nowhere near enough to offset the huge inequality produced by the market and exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The combination of budget cuts, rising debt and a slow recovery due to global vaccine inequity risks raising the SADC inequality crisis to new heights,” says Mathew Martin, Development Finance International Director.

“Recovering from the pandemic, however, offers SADC governments a once-in-a-generation opportunity to do what their citizens want – to increase taxes on the wealthy and large corporations, to boost public spending especially on healthcare, education and social protection, and to boost workers’ rights in order to tackle joblessness and precarious work. With external support, for instance through debt relief and aid, SADC governments could reduce inequality drastically and eliminate extreme poverty by 2030.”

Notes

Southern Africa is the most unequal region in the world and contains the world’s three most unequal countries (South Africa, Namibia and Zambia), and another 3 of the 10 most unequal (Eswatini, Mozambique and Botswana). All SADC member states, except Tanzania and Mauritius, are in the top 50 most unequal countries.

The region has low proportions of workers with formal contracts and rights (and therefore access to sick pay, job protection, etc.), with fewer than 40% having such rights in Malawi, Zimbabwe, Angola, DRC, Zambia, Tanzania, Mozambique and Madagascar.

Many countries had limited access to essential health services, reaching under 50% of the population in seven countries, and forcing 5.4% of people to spend catastrophic proportions (i.e. more than 10%) of their income on healthcare across the region. These poor indicators reflected low commitments to healthcare spending, with this accounting for under 10% of government budgets in Zambia, Mozambique, Malawi, Madagascar and Tanzania.

Donor pledges must end hunger in Syria

May 11, 2022

In reaction to the pledges made today at the Brussels conference on Syria, Oxfam in Syria Country Director, Moutaz Adham, said:

“The pledges made today are welcomed and show that the international community has not forgotten Syrians.

“However, donor’s priorities do not reflect the situation in Syria. For over a decade, there has been too much focus on emergency aid with limited focus on long term solutions to problems like lack of food and water. What the Syrian people need is schools and hospitals, homes that can stand and are cleared of rubble and old bombs, and jobs, so they can feed their families and stop relying on aid. Humanitarian agencies haven’t been able to provide for the long term needs of Syrians due to political considerations. These politics are denying Syrians a future and causing more Syrians to mire in poverty.

“Syrians have never been so hungry – 3 in 5 people do not know where their next meal will come from. One month’s living costs equals two months’ salary. The war in Ukraine will only increase hunger and poverty.

“Last year, donors only gave half the money needed to help people in Syria. Syrians cannot afford for this to happen yet again this year. Donors need to think long-term. Short-term solutions are not good enough.”

Notes to the editors

Read Oxfam’s media briefing on the Ukraine crisis: How and why it could cause hunger crises globally to worsen which includes a case-study on Syria.
Read Oxfam in Syria’s recent press release “Before we feared dying of war, now we fear dying of hunger”: Ukraine crisis propelling hunger in Syria.
Last year’s Humanitarian Response Plan, aimed at providing critical assistance to people in need in Syria was only 46 percent funded.
Oxfam is working in Syria and with Syrians in neighbouring countries and the communities hosting them since 2013. We make sure people have clean water, distribute cash so people can put food on the table and buy life-saving medicine, and support farmers to start farming again by giving out seeds and doing trainings and bakers to start baking again through rehabilitating old bakeries.

Response to global hunger catastrophically inadequate

May 9, 2022

Today’s “Global Report on Food Crises” – led by the UN along with 16 partner organisations including Oxfam – says that more than 193 million people across 53 countries are experiencing acute hunger and require urgent food, nutrition and livelihoods assistance.

Oxfam Global Food Security and Livelihoods expert, Emily Farr, said:

“It is deeply concerning to find extreme hunger increasing to a magnitude never seen before. 40 million more people have been pushed to extreme hunger, nearly a 25 percent surge since last year, and 80 percent since 2016. But tragically, this comes as no surprise. Even as the alarm bells have been sounding, governments across the globe collectively failed to tackle this mass suffering and deprivation.

“There are no more excuses. All the warnings are there for countries facing famine-like conditions such as Ethiopia, South Sudan and Yemen. The world has the tools that have anticipated this worsening hunger, and yet continues to choose not to act fast or adequately enough.

“G7 governments and the EU have pledged US$2.6 billion into the UN’s humanitarian appeals to date but these pale in comparison to the promises they made last year to commit $8.5 billion to end famine. To make matters even worse, some rich countries have effectively cut some of their humanitarian aid to countries facing mass hunger, malnutrition and starvation such as Mali and Syria, as they diverted aid to other crises.

“Global crises, worsened by the economic turmoil of COVID-19 and more recently by the Ukraine conflict, have pushed food prices to an all-time high in March 2022 – up by 12.6 percent over February – which is putting food ever more out of reach for millions of people.

“Mariam, a Somali girl suffering severe malnutrition, has done nothing to cause a global pandemic, the Ukraine war or the climate crisis. Yet governments responsible for these crises have largely chosen to forget Mariam and millions of children like her.

“Hunger, in a world of plenty, is an avoidable tragedy. Rich countries can save millions of people if they immediately fund the UN global appeals. They can save lives now. Warring parties can help avert hunger by allowing aid to reach those at risk of dying from food insecurity and malnutrition.

“G7 nations also must meet their responsibilities to cut their CO2 emissions. They are most responsible for the climate crisis which is causing chaos for farming and agricultural systems, and driving hunger and displacement. They should pay low-income countries for the loss and damage they are suffering, and to help smallholder farmers – especially female farmers – to adapt to climate change. This is not a matter of charity, but rather a question of justice.”

Notes to the editors

The Global Report for Food Crises is an annual report published by The Global Network for Food Crises which is an international alliance of the United Nations, the European Union, governmental and non-governmental agencies working to tackle food crises together.
New OECD data shows that overall aid spending from 30 OECD members summed 179 billion dollars in 2021. Rich countries only committed 0.33 percent of their gross national income (GNI) to development aid, the same as 2020, and well below the 0.7 percent they promised back in 1970. In 2021, just 5 countries – Luxembourg, Norway, Germany, Sweden and Denmark – have lived up to this promise.
Recently, Oxfam has expressed concern that some donor governments are already shifting aid budgets to pay for Ukrainian assistance and the costs of hosting more than 4.5 million people who have fled the country recently. Compared to 2020, aid for hosting refugees has not changed and is stabilising at 5.2 percent since its peak in 2016 when it amounted to 11 percent of aid. The current statistics do not take into account 2022 aid which has seen this shift towards aid diversion.

Big pharma urged to address vaccine inequity

April 29, 2022

In separate virtual addresses to the shareholders of Moderna, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), Oxfam called on the pharmaceutical corporations to improve COVID-19 vaccine equity and access so that everyone, everywhere has access to these life-saving shots.

Oxfam’s resolutions to Moderna and Pfizer call on the companies to study the feasibility of transferring vaccine technology and know-how to urgently ramp up production and improve sustainable access around the world. In a separate resolution before Johnson & Johnson shareholders, Oxfam seeks transparency on how the company determines pricing for its COVID vaccines in light of the billions of dollars of public funding from US taxpayers the company received.

Oxfam has urged all three vaccine manufacturers to share their technical know-how with the World Health Organization (WHO) to leverage the world’s full manufacturing capacity and support regionally based production as a means to increase the overall supply, reduce on-the-ground distributional challenges, and respond to the desire of low-and middle-income countries to produce doses for their own citizens.

“If Moderna worked with us, we could submit the WHO’s COVID-19 Vaccine mRNA Technology Transfer hub’s vaccine for approval at least one year sooner, which would save lives, decrease the risk of variants, and reduce the pandemic’s economic toll,” said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization, in his unprecedented presentation of the Oxfam resolution to Moderna shareholders via a pre-recorded statement. “We urge Moderna to share technology and know-how with the WHO hub and commit to not enforcing patents for COVID-19 and other essential vaccines in countries hosting the WHO hub and spokes. We also urge them to offer training to scientists working on those efforts through the Moderna mRNA access program.”

“We are in the midst of the greatest public health crisis in 100 years. Despite safe and effective vaccines like Pfizer’s, thousands of people are still dying every day because protections against the coronavirus have not been made accessible to all,” said Ady Barkan, Founder and Co-Executive Director of Be A Hero, presenting the Oxfam resolution to Pfizer shareholders via recording. “Billions of people remain unvaccinated in part because Pfizer cannot produce enough doses on its own. And yet, Pfizer refuses to share its technology to boost global manufacturing.”

JNJ’s COVID-19 vaccine has protected people against severe illness and saved lives—yet the company has not done enough to ensure equitable access and transparency about its pricing strategy, despite the massive investment of 1.5 billion dollars in public funds that JNJ received,” said Maaza Seyoum, Global South Convener, People’s Vaccine Alliance, presenting the Oxfam resolution to Johnson & Johnson shareholders via recording. “This injustice has heartbreaking consequences. Millions of grandparents and healthcare workers across Africa are not protected from this virus. In India alone, over two million children have lost a parent to the pandemic. These lives matter.”

Oxfam filed the shareholder resolutions because more than two years into the COVID-19 pandemic and a year after the introduction of highly effective life-saving vaccines, 74 percent of people in high-income countries are fully vaccinated, while just 12 percent of people in low-income countries are.

The failure of major pharmaceutical companies to do more to ensure vaccine equity and access threatens the companies’ reputations and the interests of corporate investors who are impacted by the pandemic’s continued impact on the global economy, in addition to the devastating toll in illness and death.

“Moderna, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson have prioritized short-term profit-making over long-term sustainability and reputational risks, as well as public health needs. The flawed donation-based model has produced vast vaccine inequity, despite the desire, willingness, and ability for countries around the world to produce their own doses for their own citizens,” said Abby Maxman, President and CEO of Oxfam America. “We are proud to partner with Dr. Tedros, Ady Barkan, and Maaza Seyoum to urge shareholders to realize that a model based on tech sharing and local production will not only help end the current pandemic but also make the world more resilient for the future.”