Oxfam’s new Davos report highlights how our economic system funnels billions to billionaires while ordinary workers lose. A big part of the solution has to be new wealth and windfall taxes, including a European wealth tax, says Chiara Putaturo.
Inclusive language, taxing the super-rich and a feminist alternative to GDP… top reads of 2023
Catch up on the top Oxfam papers and blogs of last year.
Five ways to tackle discrimination against Roma people displaced by war in Ukraine
Powerful, first-hand accounts and evidence gathered by local NGOs show how Roma fleeing Ukraine’s war have been frozen out of the support offered to many other refugees. Padmini Iyer and Sarah Redd introduce a new report that reveals the scale of discrimination facing Roma seeking refuge – and set out five actions that could transform their lives.
How are land rights connected to climate justice?
Pubudini Wickramaratne and Rashmini de Silva introduce a new paper that spotlights the voices of rural Asians suffering loss and damage to their land and explain how secure land rights are essential to increasing climate resilience.
What is the Palma ratio? And how can it turbo-charge efforts to cut inequality?
The UN’s current inequality measure doesn’t adequately describe the gulf between the rich and the rest. As global efforts to reduce inequality falter, Anthony Kamande sets out the case for international organisations and governments to adopt and target alternative metrics.
Five things we need for a feminist economic future
Why is debt a feminist issue? And why is it time to advance alternatives to GDP? Rachel Noble reports back from an inspiring gathering of the International Association for Feminist Economics in Cape Town.
We need to talk about inequality in West Africa
As the African Union and regional economic communities gather to discuss their economies, the gulf between the rich and the rest in West Africa needs to be top of the agenda, says Mohamadou Fadel Diop – and that conversation must give serious attention to inequality-busting policies such as reversing austerity and debt cancellation.
What worked, what didn’t – and what we need to change: looking back on a decade of Oxfam’s impact
Katrina Barnes introduces a new analysis that brings together over 100 impact evaluations of Oxfam projects between 2011 and 2021 – and sets out how we are reimagining the way we define and measure “impact” to better reflect the priorities of people we work with.
Amid the hostility to Roma refugees, an act of compassion
When Nadia went into labour just two weeks after fleeing Ukraine for Poland, local people rushed to her help. But Oxfam’s research shows that such acts of kindness are still too rare in a refugee response often blighted by anti-Roma discrimination, says Padmini Iyer in a blog for World Refugee Day.
An ‘Uber’ app for cooks and cleaners? How tech is starting to change the lives of informal domestic workers
On International Domestic Workers’ day, Fatema Tuz Johoora and Tarek Aziz explain how gig economy apps can make Bangladesh’s invisible army of domestic workers visible, as well as offering new opportunities to help them claim their rights to better pay and conditions.