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Reports

Not Everyone Is In The Same Boat

Oxfam has published a new report: “Not Everyone Is in the Same Boat: Climate Change and Inequality in the Middle East and North Africa”

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is one of the most climate-vulnerable regions in the world. But while the impacts of climate change are widespread, they’re not felt equally. The richest individuals and fossil fuel economies are driving emissions at staggering rates, while the poorest communities are left to face the worst consequences with the fewest resources to adapt.

Oxfam’s new report lays bare the scale of inequality across MENA. It shows how climate breakdown is deepening poverty, straining public services, and hitting women, refugees, and low-income workers hardest. Meanwhile, decades of austerity have left governments unable to invest in the kind of climate action that builds resilience and protects lives.

The report also highlights how the ultra-rich in MENA are not just high emitters. They also hold disproportionate power over climate and economic policy. Their wealth and influence allow them to shield themselves from the worst impacts while continuing to profit from polluting industries. In contrast, those with the least are left exposed, with little say in decisions that affect their futures.

Climate finance is another major concern. Despite growing needs, funding is often inaccessible, poorly tracked, and rarely prioritises gender equality or grassroots resilience. Without urgent reform, climate finance risks reinforcing the very inequalities it should be addressing.

Oxfam is calling for bold action: tax the wealthiest, end austerity, and invest in public services and climate solutions that put people first. The report also urges international donors and institutions to take responsibility, not just by increasing climate finance, but by ensuring it reaches those most affected and supports locally led solutions.

This is not just a regional issue. The climate crisis in MENA reflects a global pattern where those who contribute the least suffer the most. If wealthy governments and institutions continue to look the other way, they risk enabling a system that rewards pollution and punishes poverty.

Climate justice in MENA is not only about reducing emissions. It is about fairness, accountability, and making sure no one is left behind.

Read the report here

From Private Profit to Public Power: Financing Development, not Oligarchy

Oxfam has published a new briefing paper: “From Private Profit to Public Power: Financing Development, Not Oligarchy”

Wealthy governments are making the largest cuts to life-saving development aid since aid records began in 1960. Oxfam analysis finds that G7 countries alone, who account for around three-quarters of all official aid, are cutting aid by 28% for 2026 compared to 2024. Whilst critical aid is cut, the debt crisis is bankrupting governments – 60% of low-income countries are at the edge of a debt crisis – with the poorest countries paying out far more to repay their rich creditors than they are able to spend on classrooms or clinics. Only 16% of the targets for the Global Goals are on track for 2030. 

Oxfam’s new analysis examines the failures of a private investor-focused approach to funding development. A decade-long effort by major development actors to recast their mission as one of supporting powerful Global North financial actors has led in fact to a host of harms and at the same time only mobilized paltry sums. The analysis also looks at the role of private creditors, who now outpace bilateral lenders by five times and account for more than half the debt owed by low- and middle-income countries, in exacerbating the debt crisis with their refusal to negotiate and their punitive terms. 

Read report here. 

MEDIA ADVISORY: New paper on exploitation of Palestinian women working in illegal Israeli settlements

Paper released as West Bank sees escalations in Israeli military and settler violence, killings, injuries, forced displacements, residential demolitions and movement restrictions.

Oxfam has released a briefing paper Palestinian Women Working in Illegal Israeli Settlements: Dependencies, Exploitation, and Opportunity Costs, shedding light on the harrowing daily realities faced by many vulnerable Palestinian women employed in exploitative and harsh conditions in illegal Israeli settlements, where their rights are being systematically violated. 

The paper, which draws on data and case studies from two key reports by Oxfam’s partners: the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute (MAS) and the Mother School Society (MSS), examines the lives of women working in illegal Israeli settlements, highlighting the emotional, physical, economic and social consequences of this growing trend, and the ways in which expanding settlements continue to devastate Palestinian livelihoods, particularly in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem).  

Interviewed women spoke of being forced to work without contracts, sometimes in hazardous working conditions, over long hours, with some being subjected to harassment.   

More than 6,500 Palestinian women currently work in Israeli settlements, primarily in agriculture (65.5%) and manufacturing (33.3%), with the number steadily increasing.  

Key findings of the report include: 

  • No contracts: The vast majority of women working in Israeli settlements (94%) do not have written contracts, leaving them acutely vulnerable to financial and labor exploitation and unable to address violations of their rights.

  • Hazardous working conditions: According to Oxfam’s partner, Mother School Society’s survey of Palestinian women, a staggering 93% of these women reported working in unhealthy and unsafe conditions. Examples include working in fields exposed to hazardous pesticides without safety regulations or protective equipment.

  • Long hours: Over 71% of women indicated long working hours as a major burden and challenge both for themselves and their families. A significant portion of them said they worked two shifts, morning and evening, to earn enough money, resulting in chronic mental and physical stress and exhaustion.

  • Job Insecurity: Many women reported having to face long and costly commutes, a lack of health insurance and injury compensation. Many also lacked Israeli-approved work permits, which are required to legally access jobs in settlements, leaving them more vulnerable to exploitation and sudden dismissal.

  • Harassment: Somen women reported wage theft and employees withholding promised benefits, making racial discriminations, as well as harassment, sexual assault, sexual harrassment and physical violence. 

43-year-old Dalal, said: 

“I’ve been working in the settlement for 8 years, I’m the sole provider for my family. Financially, things are tough and my husband is unemployed. If no-one works, who will take care of the household expenses? We only earn 90 shekels a day ($24), what can you buy with that?” 

Bushra Khalidi, Oxfam’s OPTI Policy Lead, said:  

“We’re urging the international community to end the exploitative employment of Palestinian women in these settlements and uphold their rights and protections.  

“Palestinians living in the West Bank are growing increasingly dependent on settlements for jobs but this is less by choice and more the result of decades of Israeli policies that have eroded the Palestinian economy. Israeli settlement expansion, land confiscation, and restrictions on Palestinian trade, movement, and development have created conditions of poverty and unemployment, forcing more Palestinian women into exploitative labor.  The international community must act to dismantle these injustices and ensure Palestinian women have access to dignified and lawful employment within their own economy.” 

The report calls for assurances of Palestinians’ access to land and resources, ending the exploitation of their labor, and enabling them to build resilient local economies. Only by addressing these root causes and holding the Government of Israel accountable for its actions can Palestinians reclaim their rights to dignified work, economic security, and self-determination. 

Ending the system of oppression requires a just and urgent solution – dismantling the illegal settlements and ending the occupation. 

Notes to editors

Contact information:

For more information, please contact: media@oxfam.org.nz

Personal to Powerful Report

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

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

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.