A study released last week by Oxfam, a global movement seeking to end the injustice of poverty, found that the two wealthiest men in Latin America and the Caribbean owned more than 334 million others in the region.
Profits from Covid-19 jabs have helped at least nine people become billionaires, a campaign group claimed, calling for an end to pharmaceutical corporations' monopoly control on vaccine technology.
More than a third of the world's population - some 2.7 billion people - has not received government aid during the coronavirus pandemic, Oxfam said on Tuesday, with gaping differences between rich and poor countries.
The vast majority of International Monetary Fund loans extended during the Covid-19 pandemic have suggested or demanded spending cuts that would worsen poverty and inequality, charity group Oxfam says.
The world's richest 2,153 people controlled more money than the poorest 4.6 billion combined in 2019, the charity Oxfam said on Monday. It said poor women and girls were at the bottom of the scale, putting in 12.5 billion hours of unpaid care work each and every day, estimated to be worth at least US$10.8 trillion a year.
Oxfam GB has been banned from operating in Haiti after its staff were accused of sexual misconduct following the 2010 earthquake. Haiti's government said the decision was taken because of Oxfam's “violation of its laws and serious breach of the principle of human dignity”.
The chairman of the charity Oxfam International, Juan Alberto Fuentes, has been arrested in Guatemala. Fuentes was detained as part of an investigation into a corruption scandal dating back to his time as Guatemala's finance minister, but no charges have been brought so far.
The deputy head of Oxfam has resigned over what she said was the British charity's failure to adequately respond to past allegations of sexual misconduct by some of its staff in Haiti and Chad.
The gap between the super rich and the rest of the world widened last year as wealth continued to be owned by a small minority, Oxfam has claimed. Some 82% of money generated last year went to the richest 1% of the global population while the poorest half saw no increase at all, the charity said.
Just eight of the richest people on earth own as much combined wealth as half the human race. The charity Oxfam does the math each year and publishes its results just in time for the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where many of the spectacularly wealthy are often among the attendees, along with diplomats, political figures, and business and cultural leaders.