United States

While the United States faces the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression because of COVID-19, a subset of corporations is reaping dramatic profits that are flowing to their already wealthy, mostly white male shareholders, further exacerbating existing inequalities, according to a new analysis released by Oxfam today.

Forty-three percent of women surveyed across five countries reported feeling more anxious, depressed, isolated, overworked, or ill because they are having to shoulder even more unpaid care work as a result of the coronavirus crisis, said Oxfam today. 

“We needed the World Health Assembly to unite behind a People’s Vaccine, not a Trump Administration seeking scapegoats for a pandemic it has mis-handled from the start", said Anna Marriott, Health Policy Manager at Oxfam, commenting at the closure of the World Health Assembly today.

There has been a catastrophic failure by the international community to forge a global ceasefire in order for countries in conflict – and the world at large – to stop the coronavirus and save millions of lives, said Oxfam today.

Oxfam’s humanitarian work in Iraq is restricted due to heightened security concerns, road checkpoints and travel difficulties, following Iranian missile attacks on US military bases in Iraq overnight in retaliation for the US killing of the Iranian General Suleimani.

The United States’ withdrawal from the Paris Agreement is an indefensible, pointless and morally bankrupt capitulation that will only serve to weaken the global effort to combat the climate crisis, Oxfam said.

Reaction to today’s ruling by the US Supreme Court that the International Finance Corporation (IFC) was not categorically immune from lawsuits under US law.

One year on from the historic United Nations summit for refugees and migrants, the international community has failed to make meaningful progress towards meeting the goals of the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants.

The discriminatory Executive Order bars Syrian refugees from entering the United States indefinitely, suspends all refugee admissions for 120 days, imposes bans on refugees on the basis of their religion, and blocks citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries, refugees or otherwise, from entering the United States for 90 days: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

Oxfam praised President Barack Obama and President Xi Jinping for officially joining their countries to the Paris climate agreement today.