Briefs

Living Income: From Right to Reality

Living income is trending. More and more food and agriculture companies are adopting living income commitments, and others should follow suit.

But it’s a complex topic in practice. Effective interventions go beyond the farm to address the inequality of market power and risks that farmers experience. Oxfam presents eight essential issues companies confront on living income, with recommendations for ensuring interventions benefit farmers. Recommendations focus on: approaching living income as a human right, changing the way companies do business, leveling the playing field, and engaging and enabling others.

Living Income: From Right to Reality is the first in a new Oxfam series called "Briefings for Business on Inequality in Food Value Chains". In each briefing Oxfam sets out key considerations, provides examples of company policy/practice, and offers recommendations for what companies can do to address inequality in a way that will drive real impact.

Are the global tax proposals in the interests of low- and middle-income countries?

In July 2021, 133 governments reached a high-level agreement on the taxation of multinational corporations, combining a redistribution of taxing rights to market countries (“Pillar 1”) with a global minimum tax (“Pillar 2”). How good is it for low and middle-income countries? And what should they do about it?

Tightening the Net

Net zero climate targets – implications for land and food equity

The Great Vaccine Robbery

Pharmaceutical corporations charge excessive prices for COVID-19 vaccines while rich countries block faster and cheaper route to global vaccination

Increasing investments in care in the IDA20 replenishment

COVID-19 has highlighted the vital importance of care to the functioning of economies and societies, while also demonstrating that the massive care work increases borne mostly by women and girls will, if left unaddressed, exacerbate inequality for years to come. The United States is in a prime position to fulfill its commitment to gender equality and inclusive economic recovery for the world by calling for the World Bank’s twentieth International Development Association’s (IDA) replenishment (IDA20) to include transformative policy commitments on care.

IDA20 offers an important opportunity to tackle the rising gender inequality tied to the unequal distribution of unpaid care work between women, girls, and men. IDA is a crucial source of concessional finance that lower-income countries depend on and is one of the biggest providers of core support for human development and public services. Against a backdrop of fiscal consolidation and contraction in the wake of COVID-19, it is imperative for IDA20 to do its part in tackling the gendered impacts of COVID-19. Care—which has previously been neglected in IDA strategies—must be integrated into the IDA20 policy commitments. Investments in a package of care of measures (e.g., investments in care-supporting physical infrastructure, care services, care-supporting social protection, gender-responsive budgeting, and data collection) are critical to reduce the heavy, unequal, and gendered responsibility of unpaid and underpaid care work.

As the US and other IDA donors negotiate the terms of the IDA20 replenishment, Oxfam urges the USG to encourage the World Bank to include strong commitments on care in the policy package. The commitments should clearly outline how the World Bank plans to support IDA countries to recognize, reduce, and redistribute unpaid and underpaid care work, and ensure adequate representation of caregivers in decision-making.

South Sudan: 10 Years Since Independence

Ten years ago, the people of South Sudan voted almost unanimously to secede and create their own independent nation. Tragically, after initial celebrations came years of brutal conflict, hunger, poverty, and economic instability – but throughout it all, communities have held on to the promise of their new nation.