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A young woman receives food aid at the Bulakhali camp in Bangladesh, where 13,500 people are seeking humanitarian assistance. Oxfam plans to assist more than 200,000 people with emergency support. Photo: AJM Zobaidur Rahman/Oxfam

Oxfam is responding with water, sanitation, and other essentials

Half a million people have arrived in Bangladesh from Myanmar since August. This unprecedented influx of refugees in a short period of time has led to a large and escalating humanitarian crisis.

The camps are not equipped to handle the surge of people. More than 70 percent of the at least 501,000 refugees are without adequate shelter, and half of them have no safe drinking water. They are in need life-saving assistance including clean drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene, and essential food and emergency supplies.

Working with local partners NGO Forum for Public Health and Coast Trust, Oxfam has reached more than 100,000 people with clean drinking water, portable toilets and sanitation facilities, and food including rice, sugar, and fortified biscuits. We are also working with the government and other agencies to make sure that new refugee camps are designed to meet humanitarian standards.

Here, you can see the conditions in which refugees in Bangladesh are living.

Photo: Tommy Trenchard/Panos

Balukhali camp in southern Bangladesh is now home to thousands of refugees.

Photo: Tommy Trenchard/Panos

Men drill for water in Balukhali camp.

Photo: Aurélie Marrier d’Unienville

A group of girls collect drinking water for their families from a pump in Balhukali camp.

Photo: Aurélie Marrier d’Unienville

A father carries his son across a broken bamboo bridge at the edge of Balhukali camp in Bangladesh. Three days of heavy rains have flooded many of the areas where refugees had set up temporary shelters, forcing them to move to higher ground.

Photo: Aurélie Marrier d’Unienville

A Rohingya man carries a bag of food aid.

Photo: Oxfam

Mahmud, 65, is staying in a new settlement at Cox’s Bazar. He has been in Bangladesh for two weeks, but this is the first time he could use a latrine.

In total, we are planning to reach more than 200,000 people. To help us reach them, and other vulnerable people affected by disasters, please donate to our Disaster Response Fund today.

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Thankgod Chigizie sits inside his school classroom. His community, Rumuekpe, in Nigeria, was badly destroyed during the conflict among various rival militants and gangs over access to oil money from 2005-2008. Many were killed and displaced, and homes, schools and churches were left in ruins. Photo: George Osodi/Panos for Oxfam America

Newest US tax cut proposal would rig tax rules even further.

In the US, the leadership of the House and Senate joined together with President Trump yesterday to release a new tax cut plan they aim to pass before the end of 2017. In short, it is bad.

The proposal is a blueprint for increasing inequality in the US and around the world. Here are a few key reasons why:

1. The plan’s main feature is huge tax cuts for large multinational companies that the public hates.

Right now large American companies use offshore tax havens and other complex schemes to avoid nearly $135 billion in taxes every year. The top 50 US companies alone have more than $1.6 stashed offshore. But instead of reforming the tax code so these companies must pay what they owe, the plan actually gets rid of all federal taxes companies must pay for profits earned offshore, offers companies a one-time special low rate to repatriate the profits they have already earned, and lowers the rate on all domestic profits companies earn in the future from 35 percent to 20 percent at most.

In other words, the plan rewards huge tax dodgers with a massive tax cut. Not only do these ideas lack logic, public polling shows that they are hugely unpopular. The Wall Street Journal recently released a poll showing that most Americans believe corporations should actually pay higher taxes:

In spite of pervasive myths that the US taxes companies at higher rates than other countries, US companies pay about the average effective tax rate of other wealthy nations. This matters to the poor because corporate taxes are among the most progressive kinds of taxes the US can rely on to raise revenues. Cutting this rate will disproportionately benefit the wealthy and result in either higher taxes for the middle class or cuts to programs that help the poor, either of which would send inequality in the wrong direction.

We have already seen efforts to severely slash funding for life-saving global anti-poverty programs in the President’s FY 2017 budget. If this tax cut plan passes, those budget pressures would be amplified dramatically in the future.

2. The plan would make it harder for poor countries to raise their own revenue.

The proposal moves the US from a “worldwide” system of corporate taxation to a “territorial” system. In simple terms, this means that American companies would no longer pay any US taxes for any profits earned abroad. This would create a greater incentive for US companies operating in poor countries to use tricks and schemes to shift their profits into tax havens. Many companies already do this, but rather than stemming tax haven abuse by American companies, the plan would accelerate it.

Additionally, this shift would force poor countries to compete with each other to offer special tax incentives to US companies to attract their business. For countries already struggling to provide even the most basic education, healthcare and infrastructure, these incentives can be costly and will make it harder for countries to ensure the poor benefit from increased foreign investment.

3. The plan will drive a global race to the bottom.

Many rich countries are watching the US tax reform debates closely and planning their own countermeasures in response. The proponents of corporate tax cuts argue that they will make the US more “competitive” globally. But just as they did when the US cut tax rates in the 80s, other rich countries will lower their own taxes. Britain has already pledged to have the lowest rate among the G7 richest countries. France and Germany have signalled they would lower their rate, too.

Moreover, rich countries are already struggling to compete with tax havens with tax rates as low as zero. There is simply no way to cut your way out of this problem. The solution must be to work collaboratively with other countries to prevent multinational companies from gaming the system. Measures to prevent companies from abusing offshore tax havens and to ensure that companies are paying taxes where their economic activity is truly occurring is the only long-term solution that can prevent a perpetual race to the bottom.

There are many reasons to oppose these tax-cut plans, but those are three of the core reasons that Oxfam – as a global anti-poverty organization – believes the proposal is so dangerous for poorer people.

Beatrice*, 19, fled the war in South Sudan with her husband and young baby after her mother was raped and killed. She is just one of the one million South Sudanese refugees currently hosted in nearby Uganda. Beatrice lives with her family in Imvepi Refugee Settlement, along with 95,000 other refugees, where she found protection and access to limited food and water. She worries for her child’s and her own future and dreams of going back to school and becoming a tailor one day.

The runaway

“We used to have a good life, but things started going wrong, we started to suffer, because of the war. This is why we moved from South Sudan, but it was a nice country before. There you see they are killing and raping people. They go from home to home and if they find you they will kill you, they slaughter, just like that,” she says. When the different armed groups started to kill her friends and relatives in her village, she ran away with her family to the bush. Unfortunately, her mother did not make it because she never recovered from multiple rape injuries. Only her husband, her baby and she managed to survive the journey.

South Sudanese refugees arriving at Imvepi Refugee Settlement. Photo: Kieran Doherty/Oxfam

“When we reached the border I was just remembering what we had witnessed, what happened to us and to our friends, how we were running, stepping over the dead bodies just to save our lives. We arrived exhausted, with nothing,” she laments.

A new life in the refugee camp

“They brought us to this place in Uganda. Now that we are here, I feel relieved. We came to a country where you see there is no disturbance, you can sleep and we do not have to run in the middle of the night under the sounds of the bullets. There is peace here and our plan is to stay and try to make our life,” she says.

Hot meals being distributed at Imvepi Refugee Settlement, Uganda. Photo: Kieran Doherty/Oxfam

Life in Imvepi is not easy. Food is sometimes scarce and access to water limited. Due to problems with her registration card, Beatrice did not receive her daily portion of food and basic equipment for cooking. “You have to chase where they are sharing. You look for the new people – the refugees- and share with them. My neighbour is helping me as well. If you don’t have you can ask from your neighbour and if you have some you bring back, you pay back,” she explains.

In the camp, each family is allocated a 30 x 30m plot and given emergency shelter materials. Photo: Kieran Doherty/Oxfam

Imvepi Refugee Settlement opened in February 2017 and can host a maximum of 110,000 people. To date, 95,000 people are registered and there are around 1,000 new arrivals every day, which makes the situation for residents more and more complicated.

“There is nothing you can provide, there is no milk. We have not eaten and any water that you get even down at the sewage you just drink to survive, even though it is dirty. After boiling you can drink it but if you don’t do it the dirt still remains,” Beatrice says.

Beatrice* lives in Imvepi Refugee Settlement with her husband and young baby.  Photo: Kieran Doherty/Oxfam

“South Sudan is my country, but I do not feel happy if they will take us back. I am not going back, because I lost all my family there. I have nothing to come back to, so I would like to stay in Uganda.”

Uganda is responding to a massive influx of refugees, one of the fastest growing in the world. The country hosts the most refugees of any African nation – 1.2 million – and is the third refugee-hosting nation in the world. There are now 1 million South Sudanese refugees in Uganda, the vast majority of them women and children. They have fled three years of brutal civil war and the severe hunger crisis it has triggered.

You can help

Support our work fighting famine and supporting the most vulnerable in South Sudan, so more families like Beatrice’s don’t have to flee.

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A computer classroom in Oneputa Combined School, northern Namibia. The Namibian government is committed to reducing inequality and secondary education is free for all students. Photo: John Hogg/World Bank

The Commitment to Reducing Inequality Index ranks 152 governments on their policies in three areas critical to reducing the gap between rich and poor: social spending, progressive taxation and labour rights.

Since the index was launched many people have been in touch to find out more – our response to some of the most common comments and questions are outlined below.

Why is Oxfam talking about inequality – shouldn’t it be focused on tackling poverty?

Extreme inequality is trapping millions of people in poverty and must be stopped. The World Bank estimates that 700 million fewer people would have been living in poverty at the end of last decade if action had been taken to reduce the gap between rich and poor. The World Bank has also been clear that there will be no way we can meet the global goal to eliminate extreme poverty unless we redouble efforts to tackle inequality.

My country isn’t ranked correctly.

As a global tool, the index only offers an indication of how well governments are tackling inequality – it doesn’t provide a comprehensive assessment.

The index focuses on taxation, social spending and labor rights because there is widespread evidence that progressive action in these areas can significantly reduce inequality. However, it does not include all policies that have an impact on inequality. For example, it doesn’t look at the distribution of land ownership or the extent to which a country operates as a tax haven. We hope to expand the indicators in future editions of the index and this could have a significant impact on the rankings of some countries. For example, Belgium would fall down the rankings if its role as a tax haven was assessed by the index.

The index is based on the most up to date data that is available from governments and international institutions however it will miss very recent developments. Several countries including Argentina and France have recently made cuts in social spending or corporate taxes which are not reflected in the index – they can expect to slip down the ranking in the next edition of the index.

This is left-wing propaganda.

Oxfam is a non-party political organization. However, we have a duty to draw attention to government action and inaction across the globe that is exacerbating poverty and inequality.

The index focuses on taxation, social spending and labor rights because there is widespread evidence that progressive action in these areas can significantly reduce inequality. For example, collective bargaining by trade unions typically raises members’ wages by 20 percent and drives up market wages for everyone.

Why isn’t my country included in the index?

Some countries have been excluded from the index because there was either insufficient data or major question marks about the quality of the data available. The extremely poor level of public data available for some countries on policies relevant to reducing inequality is a cause for serious concern -, especially in the Middle East. Oxfam is calling for governments to address this data gap.

My country is ranked towards the top of the index – does that mean all is well?

The index ranks countries in relation to each other. This means countries at the top of the index are doing better at tackling inequality than countries further down but it doesn’t mean they are doing everything they could be tackle inequality.

Even Sweden, Belgium and Denmark which top the index can do more. Sweden’s low corporate tax rates benefit wealthy business while its high rate of VAT disproportionately impacts the poorest, Belgium’s corporate tax incentives allow big business to avoid paying their fair share, and Denmark has cut taxes for its wealthiest citizens. Denmark and Belgium have also cut social welfare for their poorest and most vulnerable citizens.

Overall the index found that 112 out of the 152 countries assessed are doing less than half of what they should be doing to tackle inequality in the three policy areas assessed by the index.

What is Oxfam calling for?

The index shows that inequality is not inevitable. It is a policy choice. Government choices matter when it comes to tackling inequality.

Oxfam is calling for all governments to do more to tackle inequality by increasing and improving social spending, building fairer tax systems, and ensuring workers – especially women workers – are better paid and better protected.

Governments must also work with international institutions to improve the quality and quantity of publicly available data on inequality levels in a country and the policies that governments are taking to tackle it.

A key thing the New Zealand government must do right now is crush tax avoidance by multinationals. Our broken tax system means big companies can legally avoid paying a lot of tax in New Zealand, and it’s depriving our social services of millions of dollars each year.

We need you to join us in telling our Minister of Revenue, Judith Collins, that we want our tax policies cleaned up to keep public spending money in New Zealand and to close the gap between the rich and the poor.

Sign the petition