SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
oxfam
Oxfam Warns Record $18.3 Trillion in Billionaire Wealth 'Highly Dangerous' to Democracy
"Governments are making wrong choices to pander to the elite and defend wealth while repressing people’s rights and anger at how so many of their lives are becoming unaffordable and unbearable."
Jan 19, 2026
A report released Monday as global elites convened in Davos, Switzerland for the annual World Economic Forum found that the collective wealth of the world's billionaires hit a record $18.3 trillion last year, a marker of supercharged inequality that is threatening democracy across the globe.
Oxfam International's report, Resisting the Rule of the Rich: Protecting Freedom From Billionaire Power, found that the total number of billionaires worldwide surpassed 3,000 for the first time in history in 2025. Billionaire wealth rose by $2.5 trillion, over 16%, last year. That sum, Oxfam observed, would be enough to eradicate extreme poverty 26 times over.
The new report focuses on the dire political consequences of allowing a small fraction of the world's population to capture so much wealth.
As Oxfam put it:
It is one thing for a billionaire to buy an enormous yacht or many luxury homes around the world. This excessive consumption can be rightly criticized in a deeply unequal world where the majority of people have very little and our planet is suffocating from relentless carbon emissions and waste. But many would reject this criticism, describing it as the politics on envy.
Yet far fewer people would disagree that when a billionaire uses their wealth to buy a politician, to influence a government, to own a newspaper or a social media platform, or to out-lawyer any opposition to ensure they are above the law, that these actions undermine progress and fairness. Such power gives billionaires control over all our futures, undermining political freedom and the rights of the rest of us.
Amitabh Behar, Oxfam International's executive director, said Monday that "the widening gap between the rich and the rest is at the same time creating a political deficit that is highly dangerous and unsustainable."
“Governments are making wrong choices to pander to the elite and defend wealth while repressing people’s rights and anger at how so many of their lives are becoming unaffordable and unbearable,” Behar said. “Being economically poor creates hunger. Being politically poor creates anger."
Oxfam's report notes that highly unequal countries are seven times more likely to experience forms of democratic backsliding, such as the erosion of the rule of law and the undermining of elections.
Both are currently taking place under President Donald Trump in the United States, which is home to more billionaires than any other nation.
That includes Tesla CEO and X owner Elon Musk, the world's richest man, who reportedly just dumped a personal record $10 million into the US Senate race on the side of a pro-Trump candidate vying to replace retiring Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). Musk was the largest single donor in the 2024 election, deploying his wealth to help propel Trump to the White House for a second term.
“No country can afford to be complacent. The pace that economic and political inequality can hasten the erosion of people’s rights and safety can be frighteningly fast."
Oxfam pointed out that billionaires also use their wealth to influence politics in ways other than bankrolling their preferred candidates. The group observed that "billionaires own more than half the world’s largest media companies and all the main social media companies."
Billionaires are also an estimated 4,000 times more likely to hold political office than ordinary people, the report states.
"The outsized influence that the super-rich have over our politicians, economies, and media has deepened inequality and led us far off track on tackling poverty," said Behar. "Governments should be listening to the needs of the people on things like quality healthcare, action on climate change, and tax fairness."
Oxfam urged governments around the world to pursue a number of reforms aimed at redressing massive inequities in income, wealth, and political power, including "effectively taxing the super-rich," establishing "stronger firewalls between wealth and politics including by tougher regulations against lobbying and campaign financing by the rich," and creating "realistic and time-bound National Inequality Reduction Plans, with well-established benchmarks and regular monitoring of progress."
“No country can afford to be complacent," Behar said. "The pace that economic and political inequality can hasten the erosion of people’s rights and safety can be frighteningly fast."
Keep ReadingShow Less
A Young Child Could Die Every 40 Seconds by 2030 Due to 'Cruel and Illegal' Trump Aid Cuts
"We are seeing years of progress unravel, and more children suffer and die preventable deaths because of these cuts."
Jan 15, 2026
President Donald Trump's shuttering of USAID last year will have a long-term negative impact on children throughout the world, according to a report released on Thursday by Oxfam.
In its analysis, Oxfam estimates that a child under the age of five could die every 40 seconds by 2030 thanks to the Trump administration's dismantling of American foreign aid programs.
Oxfam says it's basing its projections on "calculations in [the] Lancet’s impact evaluation and forecasting analysis from last July, which projected "4,537,157 child deaths by 2030."
The report also pointed to estimates from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) and Gates Foundation, which calculates "an additional 200,000 child deaths" for children under five last year. This lines up with data published by the Boston University School of Public Health last year estimating over 250,000 child deaths caused by the drastic slashing of foreign aid funding under the Trump administration.
Abby Maxman, president and CEO of Oxfam America, said that "we have run out of words to describe the depths of suffering" caused by Trump's destruction of "the entire global aid system."
"We are seeing years of progress unravel, and more children suffer and die preventable deaths because of these cuts," Maxman added.
The report also highlighted the specific impacts cuts have had in Sudan, the Philippines, and Syria.
Mayfourth Luneta, deputy executive director of the Center for Disaster Preparedness Foundation, an Oxfam partner in the Philippines, said that due to the Trump aid cuts, her organization had to cancel programs across eight communities that were impacted by floods and earthquakes last year.
"The Philippines was hit with the most powerful storms on Earth recorded last year," Luneta said. "Communities were devastated, families were left with nothing."
Shabnam Baloch, country director for Oxfam in South Sudan, described the impact that aid cuts have had on a country that is undergoing a horrific civil war.
"Water borne illnesses are spreading rapidly, starvation is imminent for many, and while needs are rising, lifesaving organizations are working with a fraction of the resources we had in previous years," said Baloch. "Oxfam, along with many other vital organizations, will be forced to scale down our programs without immediate intervention."
Sara Savva, deputy director-general the alliance of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch and All the East and the Department of Ecumenical Relations and Development (GOPA-DERD), an Oxfam partner in Syria, said her organization had "to drastically reduce the scale and scope of our programs for Syrian families and Iraqi refugees residing in Syria" in the wake of the Trump administration's cuts.
"We were notified we will no longer receive funding from the US government, and thousands of people are left without crucial services necessary to rebuild their lives after a catastrophic civil war," Savva said.
Keep ReadingShow Less
100 Days Into 'Ceasefire,' Israel Still Deliberately Depriving Gazans of Water, Other Essential Aid: Oxfam
"Needs in Gaza exceed far beyond the aid and reconstruction materials Israel is allowing in and the situation will worsen if Israel’s collective punishment and illegal blockade continues," said one water utility official.
Jan 14, 2026
Along with continuing its killing of Palestinians in Gaza and its destruction of civilian infrastructure more than three months after a "ceasefire" deal was reached, the Israeli government is violating the agreement by continuing to block humanitarian aid from entering the exclave—making it impossible for aid groups to ensure people there have adequate water as extreme weather makes the problem even worse.
As 100 days since the ceasefire agreement were marked Wednesday, international aid group Oxfam described the work it's been doing to try to restore water wells and other crucial infrastructure, but warned that Israel's decision to block 37 humanitarian organizations—including two Oxfam chapters—has made it difficult to provide Palestinians with a sustainable water supply.
As aid flows have continued to be restricted by Israel, Oxfam workers have been working "around the clock with experts from local partner organizations, to restore vital water wells—even sifting through rubble to salvage and repurpose damaged materials, including sheet metal," the group said.
They've managed to restore wells in Gaza City and Khan Younis and are now providing at least 156,000 residents with water, but parts of Gaza "remain inaccessible and construction costs have also doubled, due to the lack of materials being allowed in," said Oxfam.
“We did not just re-open these wells," said Wassem Mushtaha, Gaza response lead for Oxfam. "We have been solving a moving puzzle under the siege and restrictions to make the wells operational—salvaging parts, repurposing equipment, and paying inflated prices to get critical components, all while trying to keep our teams safe."
Mushtaha emphasized that Oxfam has over $2 million worth of "aid and water and sanitation equipment ready to enter Gaza," but Israeli authorities have repeatedly refused to allow the materials to enter since March 2025.
Oxfam has managed to reach more than 1.3 million people in Gaza with assistance since October 2023, when Israel began bombarding the exclave and blocking humanitarian relief in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack, but 1.1 million people are still in "urgent need of assistance in the harsh winter conditions," which have included freezing temperatures and intense polar winds in recent days.
That storm killed at least seven children, and United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) spokesperson James Elder emphasized Wednesday that they died because the "man-made shortage" of food and medicine had left them defenseless against the conditions.
“We are talking about layers upon layers of rejection [of aid],” Elder told Al Jazeera.
A recent survey by Oxfam found that despite the ceasefire agreement, 87% of people in Khan Younis and Gaza City still had no access to basic essentials and 89% were depending on unsustainable water trucking "to get just the bare minimum level of water needed to survive."
A Palestinian refugee named Nahla told the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East that "water decides everything. How much we drink, how we cook, how we clean our children."
More than 80% of water networks, pumping stations, main lines, tanks, and wells have been destroyed, and of Gaza's three water desalination plants, just one is operational.
Damage to sewer systems has caused overflow which is compounded by flooding, raising the risk of the spread of diseases. Eighty-four percent of households reported members of their families had suffered from outbreaks of disease in recent weeks.
"Yet basic equipment like water pumps, sandbags, and construction materials such as timber and plywood needed to reinforce shelters and drainage are delayed or rejected under 'dual-use' restrictions and bureaucratic clearance processes," Oxfam said, with Israeli authorities claiming the materials can't enter Gaza because they could feasibly be used as weapons.
Monther Shoblaq, director general of the Coastal Municipalities Water Utility, one of Oxfam's partners, commended the group's staff for "going to such lengths to bring water access to those who need it so desperately," and noted that "the equipment needed is just across the border, blocked from entry."
"Agencies are having to resort to salvaging materials from the rubble of bombed water infrastructure and the remains of people’s homes, repurposing parts, and paying inflated prices," said Shoblaq. "This is the direct result of Israeli restrictions, last-resort measures forced by siege conditions."
"Needs in Gaza exceed far beyond the aid and reconstruction materials Israel is allowing in and the situation will worsen if Israel’s collective punishment and illegal blockade continues," Shoblaq added. "Water deprivation is just one of the many human rights violations Israel has undertaken with impunity. Oxfam and other organizations who have operated in Gaza for decades must be allowed to respond at the scale."
More than 440 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes since the so-called "ceasefire" began, and more than 2,500 residential buildings have been destroyed.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular