Omxfam, an international NGO, has pointed out that the wealth of the 10 richest men has doubled during the coronavirus pandemic mainly because of widening inequality which is leading to the deaths of at least 21,300 people each day.
According to Oxfam report released today, “We enter 2022 with unprecedented concern that the current global state of extreme inequality is a form of “economic violence” against the world’s poorest people.
The structural and systemic policy and political choices are skewed in favour of the richest and most powerful, causing harm to the majority of people around the world. The Oxfam report has highlighted the COVID-19 vaccine as a major example of social inequality in the global society which doubled wealth of the richest people and increased casualties of the poor ones.
“Millions of people could have been alive today if they had a vaccine — nonetheless, they are dead, but they were denied a fair vaccination chance while big pharmaceutical corporations continued to hold monopoly control of these technologies,” Oxfam further said.
Report points out that 252 men have more wealth than one billion women and girls in Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean combined. And 10 of the world’s richest men own more than the least affluent 3.1 billion people.
Moreover, while the rich got a whole lot richer during the pandemic, whereas, the incomes of 99 percent of the people in the world suffered.
Oxfam’s report is released annually ahead of the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. However, the gathering of the world’s richest and most powerful persons has been postponed again this year due to the pandemic.
Last week, WEF released its Global Risks Report 2022 (PDF) warning that the lopsided economic recovery from the coronavirus, much of which has relied on the roll-out of vaccinations, has deepened divisions within and between nations.
It also stressed that growing inequality, made worse by the pandemic, is sure to cause additional tensions, resentments and further complicate nations’ responses to climate change, economic disparities and social instabilities.
What went wrong?
Despite efforts by the United Nations and governments over the last several decades to tackle poverty, and more evenly distribute technology and access to education, the world has been heading towards severe inequality for decades.
“These present-day divides are directly linked to historical legacies of racism, including slavery and colonialism,” the Oxfam report said.
The report notes that since 1995, the world’s top one-percenters have captured nearly 20 times more of global wealth than the bottom 50 percent. And the pandemic has made things much worse.
Low interest rates and government stimulus designed to help economies recover from 2020’s COVID-19 blow have also stoked prices for stocks and other assets, making the wealthy even wealthier.
“The trillions poured into financial markets by central banks to save the economy have led to an explosion in billionaire wealth – it is the biggest increase in history – while the pandemic has left ordinary people poorer than they would have been if it had never happened,” Gabriela Bucher, executive director of Oxfam, told Al Jazeera.
Wealth inequality does not just harm people. It hurts the planet as well. Twenty of the richest billionaires are estimated to be emitting as much as 8,000 times more carbon than the billion poorest people, according to Oxfam.
