Reports

Personal to Powerful Report

March 6, 2025

Thirty years on from the commitments enshrined in the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (BPfA) this briefing reveals a picture of broken promises and unfulfilled ambition by States. This failure is not just due to a lack of political will, but also an economic system that is unequal by design. A range of right-wing, religious, and conservative actors around the world are capitalising on persistent crises, to reorient state power towards a reassertion of racist and sexist profit-driven systems that favours the wealthy, privileges men, and harms and disadvantages women and LGBTQIA+ people in the name of ‘traditional’ family values. This diminishes governments’ capacity to protect, respect, promote, and fulfil bodily autonomy and sexual and reproductive health, rights and justice. As world leaders prepare to review their commitments to the BPfA, the consolidation and mainstreaming of these anti-rights movements risk eroding the hard-won gains of feminist, LGBTQIA+ activists and movements, ultimately breaking the social contract between the state and people.

Read report here.

Takers not Makers: The unjust poverty and unearned wealth from colonialism

January 21, 2025

Billionaire wealth has risen three times faster in 2024 than 2023. Five trillionaires are now expected within a decade. Meanwhile, crises of economy, climate and conflict mean the number of people living in poverty has barely changed since 1990.

Most billionaire wealth is taken, not earned – 60% comes from either inheritance, cronyism and corruption or monopoly power. Our deeply unequal world has a long history of colonial domination which has largely benefited the richest people. The poorest, racialized people, women and marginalized groups have and continue to be systematically exploited at huge human cost.

Today’s world remains colonial in many ways. The average Belgian has 180 times more voting power in the World Bank than the average Ethiopian. This system still extracts wealth from the Global South to the superrich 1% in the Global North at a rate of US$30million an hour.

This must be reversed. Reparations must be made to those who were brutally enslaved and colonised. Our modern-day colonial economic system must be made radically more equal to end poverty. The cost should be borne by the richest people who benefit the most.

Read the report here.

Carbon Inequality Kills

October 29, 2024

The only way to beat climate breakdown and deliver social justice is to radically reduce inequality. This report reveals the catastrophic climate impacts of the richest individuals in the world, and proposes taking urgent action to protect people and the planet.

What little carbon dioxide we can still safely emit is being burned indiscriminately by the superrich. We share new evidence of how the yachts, jets and polluting investments of 50 of the world’s richest billionaires are accelerating the climate crisis. Oxfam’s research shows that the emissions of the world’s super-rich 1% are causing economic losses of trillions of dollars; contributing to huge crop losses; and leading to millions of excess deaths.

As global temperatures continue to rise, risking the lives and livelihoods of people living in poverty and precarity, we must act now to curb the emissions of the super-rich, and make rich polluters pay.

Read the report here.

Vetoing Humanity

September 24, 2024

This report aims to highlight the humanitarian consequences of the dysfunction at the UN Security Council and humanitarian finance mechanisms. A few powerful states are obstructing peace processes and undermining international laws which should be equally binding for all people. There are 23 protracted crises examined in this report, with case studies on the Democratic of Republic Congo, the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Syria and Ukraine. The growth of humanitarian needs, gaps in humanitarian funding, and the impacts of veto and penholding power are explored.

Ahead of the Summit of the Future in 2024, Oxfam urges the UN member states to use this opportunity to take decisive and bold action to rebuild a more equal, inclusive, efficient, and responsive system. This will ensure that they fulfill their roles in reducing and resolving crises to avoid the spiralling humanitarian consequences of protracted conflict.

Read the report here.

Doing Our Fair Share: New Zealand’s Responsibility to Provide

August 27, 2024

Humanitarian agencies World Vision New Zealand and Oxfam Aotearoa, have released an important climate finance report today – Doing Our Fair Share: New Zealand’s Responsibility to Provide Climate.

This report is published during the Pacific Islands Forum in Tonga and ahead of the United Nations climate change conference (COP29) in Baku, Azerbaijan, where the New Zealand government will be participating in negotiations on climate finance to fund climate change adaptation and mitigation measures.

Read the report here.

Note to Editors:

New Zealand’s fair share of climate finance has been calculated by looking at the country’s share of responsibility for climate change (based on the country’s cumulative emissions of greenhouse gases since 1992 and since 1850) and its ability to pay (according to its Gross National Income) relative to other higher-income (“Annex II”) countries.

A new climate finance goal that delivers for the Pacific

August 27, 2024

This report brings together the voices, experiences and demands of civil society from across the Pacific region, including Australia and New Zealand. It has been endorsed by the Pacific Islands Climate Action Network and 55 organisations and networks across seven countries, including Australia and New Zealand. The report presents a comprehensive vision for a new climate finance goal that delivers for the most vulnerable communities, and that sets the world on track to scale up climate action, phase out fossil fuels and transition to a cleaner, greener and more just future for all.

Read report here.