News & Media

Western Sahara: Oxfam’s reaction to MINURSO renewal

November 2, 2020

In reaction to the UN Security Council’s renewal of the mandate of the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSU) 27 October, Oxfam in Algeria Country Director, Haissam Minkara, said:

“Oxfam welcomes the decision but warns of the continued suffering of over 170,000 Sahrawi refugees in Algeria as the conflict marks its 45th year this October. Sahrawi refugees have endured decades of exile, living in the most inhospitable Algerian Sahara and surviving almost entirely on humanitarian aid.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has fuelled chronic hunger and poverty in the camps even further – in April 2020, Oxfam and other agencies launched a joint appeal calling for $14 million to meet the immediate needs of the Sahrawi refugees in the wake of the massive impact of the pandemic. Six months on, this appeal is only 60% funded. Meanwhile, the number of households able to eat a healthy diet had dropped to a shocking 23% from an already meager 44% in December 2019. Nevertheless, achieving a peaceful resolution to this protracted conflict remains deprioritized by the international community.

“Oxfam calls for the immediate appointment of a new UN Personal Envoy for Western Sahara to restart the peace process without any further delay. After 18 months without an Envoy, the positive momentum towards a political solution that former Personal Envoy, Horst Koehler, had begun has been lost, and the sense of frustration and abandonment within the Sahrawi refugee camps continues to grow.

“In light of the conflict’s 45th anniversary, Western Sahara and the Sahrawi refugee crisis are an important reminder that if the international community does not actively pursue solutions to secure sustainable peace and security, Sahrawi refugees are set to live in deepening hunger, poverty, and further denial of their fundamental rights. The international community must live up to the expectations of the Sahrawi people and achieve a just, lasting, and mutually acceptable political solution which provides for self-determination in line with international law.”

Notes to editors

Since 1975 Algeria has hosted a large proportion of the Sahrawi population in refugee camps near the city of Tindouf, the majority of whom are dependent on humanitarian aid to sustain basic needs such as access to food, water, and shelter.
The camps are situated in a particularly hostile environment, with temperatures reaching up to 50 degrees Celsius in summer, frequent sandstorms, constant drought, and rare but devastating floods. As a result, refugees suffer from persistent levels of food insecurity and malnutrition and have limited opportunities for self-reliance.
For more on food insecurity in the Sahrawi refugee camps: https://bit.ly/3ofdEQ9
Oxfam has been active in the camps since 1975, and over the years, our work has evolved from emergency aid to the multifaceted provision of humanitarian support, resilience programming, and capacity building activities.
For more on Oxfam in the Sahrawi refugee camps: https://www.oxfam.org/en/what-we-do/countries/algeria

Later Will Be Too Late Report

October 13, 2020

In 2017, extreme hunger was the defining humanitarian crisis, with four countries on the brink of famine and 30 million people in dire need of food assistance for survival. International outcry led to a late but robust reaction that prevented the descent into full famines in all four countries.

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic is the defining global crisis, but the virus brings even greater hunger in its wake. State economies are collapsing, and millions can no longer afford food. More people are experiencing extreme hunger today than in 2017, but no equivalent reaction is on the horizon.

Click here to download the Later Will Be Too Late Report

The Hunger Virus: ” Abysmally low” funding for 55m people facing extreme hunger in seven worst-affected countries

October 13, 2020

The threat of “Covid famines” and widespread extreme hunger is setting off every alarm bell within the international community, but so far sluggish funding is hampering humanitarian agencies’ efforts to deliver urgent assistance to people in need.

A new Oxfam analysis says that the international community’s response to global food insecurity has been dangerously inadequate. The report, “Later Will Be Too Late”, is aimed at the Committee for World Food Security’s (CFS) high-level event today which is hoped to “keep food security and nutrition front-and-centre of the global sustainable development agenda”.

In Yemen, DRC, Nigeria, Burkina Faso and Somalia – that is, five of the seven countries where severe hunger continues to increase – donors have so far given no money at all for the “Covid-related nutrition assistance” part of the UN’s USD$10.34b humanitarian appeal.

This is despite more than 55 million people in those seven worst-affected countries, including Afghanistan and South Sudan, facing severe-to-extreme levels of food insecurity. There are now famine-like conditions in some parts of South Sudan and Burkina Faso.

Hunger levels in Nigeria, Afghanistan, Burkina Faso and the Democratic Republic of Congo are worse now than in 2017 when the threat of four famines was looming and only averted by a last-minute declaration by the UN that pushed donors into giving massive support.

As of today, donors have pledged just 28% of the UN Covid appeal that was launched back in March this year. Every sector including gender-based violence (58%), protection (27%), health (26.6 %) and water, sanitation and hygiene (17.2%) are chronically under-funded. But some of the worst funded sectors are food security (10.6%) and nutrition (3.2%).

The UN has divided its humanitarian appeal into “Covid” and “non-Covid”-related needs. In six of the seven countries where severe hunger is rising, donors have provided less than 40% of the funding they need for Covid-related food security.

“Even one of the first hunger ‘hot-spots’ in Africa – Burkina Faso – has only been able to secure less than half the humanitarian assistance it needs,” said Oxfam International interim Executive Director, Chema Vera.

“Three years ago, following an extraordinary food crisis, the international community rallied in the promise we would never see these levels of hunger again. And yet here we are again, with relative indifference. Millions of people simply cannot afford delay,” he said.

The economic fall-out of the coronavirus pandemic is both ripping away people’s resources to feed their families and those available to the international community amid all the competing priorities. “2020 is a perfect storm – we know that – but our primary aim must surely be to help keep people alive,” Vera said.

“The CFS must raise the alarm at the UN that famine is imminent on its watch and not enough is yet being done to stop it. We need a fairer and more sustainable food system that supports small scale producers. Years of neglect mean that million upon millions of people remain unnecessarily vulnerable to shocks like Covid, climate change and conflict.”

“In July we warned that by the end of this year more people could be dying from Covid-related hunger than from the disease itself. There is overwhelming evidence that money spent on preparedness and prevention not only saves lives today but can break the costly cycle of poverty and hunger and give people hope for tomorrow”.

“The international community should fully-fund the UN appeal now and accompany this by the strongest political action to support the Secretary-General’s call for a global ceasefire. We must break this horrific, never-ending bond between conflict and hunger.”

Notes to the editor

Donations to fund the humanitarian response for Covid are reported by the UN OCHA FTS on 30 September 2020..
Only 28% ($2.85b) of the $10.19b requested in the UN Global Humanitarian Response Plan for COVID-19 has been funded. Breaking that figure down by sector, it falls to 10.6% ($254.4m provided out of $2.4b requested) for food security and a paltry 3.2% ($7.9m provided, $247.8m requested) for nutrition. Source: UNOCHA as of 30 Sept 2020

Oxfam congratulates the UN World Food Program for its Nobel Peace Prize – Reaction

October 12, 2020

Oxfam congratulates the UN World Food Program for its Nobel Peace Prize. It is a timely and urgent recognition to the work that WFP does in fighting the scourge of global hunger. At a time when more than 135 million people in 55 countries around the world are facing severe to crisis levels of food insecurity, this recognition must also be a clarion call for wider and immediate action.

The UN’s $10.3b humanitarian appeal is today barely 40% funded – and within that, the money needed for global food security and nutrition are the most under-funded parts of the entire appeal. The international community should fully-fund the UN appeal now and accompany that with the strongest political action to support the Secretary-General’s call for a global ceasefire.

We must break the bond between conflict and hunger and work collectively towards peace. It would be terrible if this year, as we congratulate the WFP for a hugely-deserved Nobel Prize, would end with the world again forced to bear witness to mass death from starvation.

Fighting inequality in the time of Covid-19 Report

October 8, 2020

COVID-19 hit a world woefully unprepared to fight it, because countries had failed to choose policies to fight inequality. Only one in six countries assessed for the CRI Index 2020 were spending enough on health, only a third of the global workforce had adequate social protection, and in more than 100 countries at least one in three workers had no labour protection such as sick pay. As a result, many have faced death and destitution, and inequality is increasing dramatically. Governments such as South Korea have shown the way forward in combining recovery from COVID-19 with fighting inequality.

Click here to read ‘Fighting inequality in the time of Covid-19′ report

New global index shows “catastrophic” failure to tackle inequality left majority of world’s countries woefully unprepared for COVID-19

October 8, 2020

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 Commitment to Reducing Inequality Index (CRII) shows that only 26 out of 158 countries were spending a recommended 15 percent of their budgets on health prior to the pandemic, and in 103 countries at least one in three workers lacked basic labor rights and protections, like sick pay, when the virus struck.

The index ranks 158 governments on their policies on public services, tax and workers’ rights, three areas pivotal to reducing inequality and weathering the COVID-19 storm. It is being launched ahead of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) virtual Annual Meetings next week.

Chema Vera, Oxfam International’s interim executive director, said:

“Governments’ catastrophic failure to tackle inequality meant the majority of the world’s countries were critically ill-equipped to weather the pandemic. No country on earth was trying hard enough to reduce inequality and ordinary people are bearing the brunt of this crisis as a result. Millions of people have been pushed into poverty and hunger and there have been countless unnecessary deaths.”

The index highlights that no country in the world was doing enough to tackle inequality prior to the pandemic and while COVID-19 has been a wake-up call for some, many countries are still failing to act. This is helping to fuel the crisis and has increased the vulnerability of people living in poverty, especially women. For example:

The United States ranks last out of the wealthy G7 countries and trails 17 low-income countries like Sierra Leone and Liberia on labor legislation due to anti-union policies and a very low minimum wage. The Trump administration gave only temporary relief to vulnerable workers with its April stimulus package after having permanently slashed taxes which overwhelmingly benefitted corporations and rich Americans in 2017. The index’s findings compound Oxfam’s broader concerns that the pandemic landed on a healthcare system that excludes millions of people living in poverty, which most affects Black and Latinx communities ―only 1 in 10 Black households has health insurance compared with 7 in 10 white households.
Nigeria, Bahrain and India, which is currently experiencing the world’s fastest-growing outbreak of COVID-19, were among the world’s worst performing countries in tackling inequality going into the pandemic. India’s health budget (as a percentage of its overall budget) is the fourth lowest in the world and only half of the population has access to even the most basic healthcare services. Despite an already disastrous track record on workers’ rights, several state governments in India have used COVID-19 as a pretext to increase daily working hours from 8 to 12 hours a day and suspend minimum pay legislation, devastating the livelihoods of millions of poor workers now battling hunger.
Kenya, which had ranked highly (9^th) on progressive tax policies, has responded to the crisis with tax cuts for the wealthiest and big business and negligible additional funding for social protection and health measures. Nearly two million Kenyans have lost their job and tens of thousands of people living in Nairobi’s slums and in the countryside have received almost no help from the government and are struggling to feed themselves.
In Colombia, which ranks 94 out of 158 countries on labor rights, 22 million informal workers don’t have sick pay and have been forced to work to feed their families ―even if ill with COVID-19. Meanwhile, Colombian women are bearing the brunt of the economic slowdown, with an unemployment rate of 26 percent compared to just 16 percent for men.
Togo and Namibia, which were already taking strides to tackle inequality before the pandemic, have provided monthly cash grants to informal workers who lost their jobs because of lockdown measures. Ukraine, which has one of the lowest rates of inequality in the world despite its relatively low GDP, has increased frontline healthcare workers’ pay by up to 300 percent.
Since the pandemic, Bangladesh, which ranks at just 113 on the index, has stepped up by spending $11 million on bonus payments for frontline healthcare workers, most of which are women. Both Myanmar and Bangladesh have added more than 20 million people to their social protection schemes.
While some countries were taking positive steps before COVID-19 ―South Korea boosted the minimum wage, Botswana, Costa Rica and Thailand increased health spending and New Zealand launched a ‘well-being’ budget to tackle issues like child poverty and inequality, many countries had made little progress in the fight against inequality and some are going backwards. Many countries near the top of the index, such as Germany, Denmark, Norway and the UK, have been back-tracking on policies that reduce inequality like progressive taxation for decades.

Women, who generally earn less, save less and hold insecure jobs, have been particularly hard hit by the lockdowns introduced in response to the pandemic while unpaid care work and gender-based violence have increased dramatically. Nearly half of the world’s countries do not have adequate legislation on sexual assault and 10 countries, including Singapore and Sierra Leone, have no laws on equal pay or gender discrimination.

Matthew Martin, Development Finance International’s director, said:

“Extreme inequality is not inevitable, and you don’t have to be a wealthy country to do something about it. We know that policies such as free public healthcare, safety nets for people who can’t work, decent wages and a fair tax system, have been proven to fight inequality. Failure to implement them is a political choice ― one that COVID-19 has exposed with catastrophic economic and human costs.

“Governments must learn the lessons of this pandemic and seize this opportunity to build fairer, more resilient societies and a better tomorrow for us all, added Martin.

Notes to editors

Download the Commitment to Reducing Inequality Index (CRII), methodology note and datasets

Visit the index’s new, interactive website to learn more.

The 2020 CRII has seen significant changes in methodology from 2018. These changes to the index’s methodology mean that a straight comparison between the scores of a country in the 2020 index and those for 2018 may not give an accurate picture of its performance. For this reason, analysis of changes focuses on concrete policy changes since 2018’s index.

Oxfam and DFI used the 15 percent health budget recommendation in line with the Abuja Declaration. In April 2001, heads of state of African Union countries met and pledged to set a target of allocating at least 15 percent of their annual budget to improve the health sector. The Abuja Declaration provides a budget benchmark for other countries on health spending levels

Contact information

To arrange an interview with a spokesperson, contact:
Kelsey-Rae Taylor | Kelsey-Rae.Taylor@oxfam.org.nz | +64 21 298 9854