Policy Papers

This regional assessment presents the key findings and recommendations from Ukraine, Poland and Romania on the situation and particular challenges facing Roma internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees from the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Even before the invasion, Roma communities in Ukraine lived in dire conditions marked by high levels of poverty, segregation, sub-standard and overcrowded housing, and lack of access to essential services such as health and education.

On July 26, 2023, the National Council for the Safeguarding of the Fatherland (CNSP) announced that it had overthrown the current President Mohamed Bazoum and his government. The reaction of part of the international community resulted in a number of individual and collective sanctions.

Oxfam reached 952,428 people across Syria and Türkiye with food, water and sanitation facilities, hygiene and health promotion, and protection interventions in the first six months of its emergency response phase. Oxfam thanks all our supporters and institutional donors who made this possible.

Latin American societies live on a permanent state of economic, social and political polarisation due to the impact of a major inequality crisis in which wealth is highly concentrated, and democracy and natural resources are captured for the benefit of the few. This July, the European Union (EU), under a Spanish presidency that has pushed for a high-level summit between the two regions, has the opportunity to renew the political dialogue, the economic relations and the cooperation agenda so that they can help building new social pacts focused on equality, environmental protection and human rights.

This report examines the support to private healthcare provision in India by the World Bank’s private sector arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC). Despite supporting private healthcare in the country since 1997, no healthcare results for lending and investments have been disclosed since the start of these operations over twenty-five years ago.

Development finance institutions owned by European governments and the World Bank Group are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on expensive for-profit hospitals in the Global South that block patients from getting care, or bankrupt them, with some even imprisoning patients who cannot afford their bills.

Sixteen months ago, war escalated in Ukraine, causing a mass displacement of civilians unprecedented in Europe since the Second World War. Because the scale of suffering was so large, Oxfam decided very quickly to mobilize in support and to build a humanitarian response that was led by local civil society organizations on the ground. From March 2022 to February 2023, with our partners we have supported more than 1.1 million people with vital humanitarian assistance across Ukraine, Poland, Romania, and Moldova.

In 2009, high-income countries committed in the Copenhagen Accords to mobilize US$100 billion a year by 2020 in climate finance for low- and middle-income countries. Oxfam reported on the progress of this commitment in 2016, 2018 and 2020. This year’s report finds that high-income countries have not only failed to deliver on their commitment, but also – as in previous years – generous accounting practices have allowed them to overstate the level of support they have actually provided.

2023 could be a turning point. A year when the world emerges from unprecedented crises, and governments deliver progressive reforms that build a brighter future for all, and for the planet.

But despite the dire economic situation facing the poorest countries today, and much political discussion of the trillions needed to tackle poverty, inequality and climate change, there is no indication that rich countries are willing to pay the true price of a fair and sustainable future. 

We are living through an unprecedented moment of multiple crises. Tens of millions more people are facing hunger. Hundreds of millions more face impossible rises in the cost of basic goods or heating their homes.

EU Justice ministers will meet next Thursday, 1 December, to agree on the EU’s new rules to make companies accountable for the damage they cause to people and the planet. The law lost most of its teeth during negotiations between EU countries and risks being a far cry from what is needed.   

How prevailing economic policy choices are a form of gender-based violence