Planned cuts to disability benefits will be devastating for people already struggling to pay their bills, with stroke survivors, amputees and people with serious mental health conditions among the groups targeted, says Samuel Thomas of anti-poverty charity Z2K.
Austerity is creating fertile ground for the far-right: instead the UK must invest to fix its social infrastructure
The UK government needs to listen to Iceland’s progressive prime minister when she says robust welfare policies are the antidote to far-right extremism. And what’s more, investing in social infrastructure – in care, in health, in schools – is essential to driving the growth the government wants, says Amy Brooker of the Women’s Budget Group.
How the surge in land seizures and violence by Israel in the West Bank adds up to a brutal new level of oppression
The incursion of Israeli tanks into the West Bank this week is just the latest step in an intensifying and systematic crackdown. Bushra Khalidi on five repressive tactics the Israeli government has been using, including new laws that will accelerate annexation. The strategy, she says, is now clear: make Palestinian life unlivable.
Too many UK workers can’t afford to get ill – but new reforms to sick pay don’t go far enough
The Employment Rights Bill passing through the UK parliament is a once-in-a-generation chance to end the scandal of people being pushed into poverty simply because they get sick. But though it contains some welcome reforms, says Sylvie Pope at The Centre for Progressive Change, it risks leaving many people worse off or still facing hardship.
‘It feels like a more innocent time for Oxfam and for our belief in progress’: looking back on Make Poverty History
Twenty years after he watched Nelson Mandela’s rousing launch speech in Trafalgar Square, Dominic Vickers reflects on the impact of the landmark Make Poverty History campaign for trade justice, debt relief and better aid – and wonders if a new generation can take up the cause again.
Why the campaign for reparations must put gender justice at its heart
Millions of women in the Global South earn a pittance, own no wealth or land and do far more unpaid care than men – and much of their condition today can be traced back to the economic devastation caused by both colonialism and the extractive economic system it created. That’s why any plan for redress must include justice for women. In the latest blog in our World Economic Forum series, Lurit Yugusuk and Hazel Birungi set out five ways to do that…
Who wants to be a trillionaire? How Oxfam worked out five men could win the ultimate wealth prize.
Alex Maitland takes us through the number-crunching behind the headline prediction from our Davos report: that there will be five trillionaires within a decade.
Get ready for the new trillionaire class: whose wealth will be built not on merit but inheritance, monopoly – and the legacy of colonialism
The world looks set to see five trillionaires by the end of the decade — and more billionaires are now being created through inheritance than entrepreneurialism. Anjela Taneja and Harry Bignell introduce Oxfam’s 2025 Davos report, which reveals the scale of unearned wealth — and how those riches are built on a colonial legacy of exploitative global systems.
Want an economy that works for women? Keep care services public – and fund them properly
Deep cuts to public spending or abandoning provision to profit-making providers will not deliver the decent services millions of women so urgently need, say Myrah Nerine and Rachel Noble.
Why are we still waiting for justice on loss and damage?
Remember the fanfare two years ago when rich countries promised new money to respond to the destructive impacts of the climate emergency? Well, the paltry climate finance deal at COP29 contained precisely zero concrete commitments on loss and damage. Chiara Liguori on how the hopes of poorer countries and communities were raised – only to be brutally dashed.