Take action now to help end tax dodging
Fight Inequality, Beat Poverty
Ask the Irish government to support real corporate tax transparency.
In order to beat poverty for good we need to change the rules that allow corporations to dodge paying their fair share of tax.
Currently, the global tax system drives inequality by allowing some companies to legally avoid paying tax. Meanwhile, it is the poor – who are landed with higher tax bills and inadequate public services – that pay the price.
Over the past two years, with the support of people across the island of Ireland, we've been campaigning to increase tax transparency by introducing public Country by Country Reporting, or pCBCR in the EU. If pCBCR was implemented, corporations would have to publish where they make profits and pay taxes - and this would make it much easier to lift the lid on tax dodging in the EU.
Right now, we need to remind our government to support pCBCR and real corporate tax transparency.
Will you help us?
Together, we want to make as much noise as possible – please join us by tweeting the Minister for Finance @Paschald and the Minister of State @PatBreen1 to let them know we are serious about fighting the inequality caused by tax dodging and beating poverty for good.
Tweet them now
Thank you so much for your support – you can read more about how to get involved in our fight against poverty and inequality here: https://www.oxfamireland.org/getinvolved
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The Oxfam training putting women on the right track
Knowledge is power – just ask these women from Nairobi. They are all members of the Oxfam project, Wezesha Jamii – Swahili for 'empowering communities' – which, among others, provides training, supports job opportunities and promotes equality.
The majority of these vulnerable women, who live in informal settlements across the Kenyan capital, are either domestic workers or small-scale traders. Before getting involved in the project, many of them knew nothing about their rights or entitlements – and were often exploited by their employers.
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Left: Sheillah Achieng and her baby in their apartment in Mathare, Nairobi, Kenya. Photo: Katie G. Nelson/Oxfam Right: Doreen styles a woman's hair in her salon in Mukuru. Photo: Katie G. Nelson/Oxfam
Sheillah Achieng (28), who left school with few qualifications, says domestic work is the only job she can do. She describes how a former employer once threatened her with a knife when she asked for her wages. But since becoming a member of Wezesha Jamii, she understands that she can go somewhere for help.
"Now I am enlightened and if something similar happened," says the mother of three. "I would go to the police station. I know there are some offices we can go to."
The project also taught Sheillah about her rights around maternity leave. Before her youngest child was born, she asked her employer if she could have some time off. "They told me I could have three months… I understood that if you are pregnant you are due some leave. I didn't know that before."
"I am very happy that I learned my rights about maternity leave. I didn't know before that three months is my right. Normally you would get two weeks and then find someone in your job."
The advice she's received through Wezesha Jamii (WJ) has made Sheillah realise that she wants better treatment at work: "What I want is for more employers to treat us as human beings. I feel very bad to see employers not treating us well. "I feel more confident and I have more energy. I feel encouraged that I know my rights."
Elsewhere, Doreen Muththoni has tried to make a go of various business ideas down through the years. But from selling bread, to cooking and selling goat meat, she has struggled to earn enough money. After becoming a member of Wezesha Jamii, she was trained in how to develop a good business idea, how to budget and how to manage her money.
Now running a thriving beauty and hair salon, Doreen says: "The project helped me choose the business I could do and one that could bring me more income than the meat business. What I do now is sell hair products and also do women's hair.
"Through the training they showed me how to save, I didn't save before… I can save more than 10,000 KSh through my business."
These days Doreen has no problem paying school fees for her three children – not only that, she has opened savings accounts for them too.
"We enjoy many things now we don't have so many problems," she says. "We feel free and happy now. I am filled with joy. The things we are doing, WJ has been able to help me so much and now I know more than what I used to know."
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The top 4 questions you asked about the new Oxfam inequality report
Posted by: Alice Reetham
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Our new report about the state of inequality in the world reveals how our economy is delivering unimaginable rewards for those at the top, while tens of millions of people are still in poverty.
As soon as we published it, we started to receive lots of great comments and questions. Here are some of the most interesting questions we've been asked, and our answers to them.
"Poverty is going down globally. People are living longer, healthier lives. Why should we care if a few people are also getting really rich?"
It's absolutely true – and absolutely brilliant – that extreme poverty has declined very significantly over the past 25 years. In fact, the number of people living in extreme poverty – which is defined as anyone living on less than $1.90 a day – has more than halved. However, that doesn't mean we can now put our feet up, or even carry on along the same path that we've been going down.
Over this same time period, inequality has been increasing within most countries, and is now at dangerously high levels. There's a great deal of evidence to show that extreme inequality leads to very negative social, political and economic impacts and stands in the way of the fight against poverty globally. The majority of extreme poverty is now in middle-income countries.
The rise of extreme economic inequality is also a serious blow to the fight against gender inequality. Women feel the impact of inequality, and are more likely to live in poverty than men.
"Oxfam is a charity – why are you talking about politics?"
Ending poverty is Oxfam's reason for being – but we know that we can't achieve our goal unless we work with others to tackle the structural issues that push people into poverty and keep them trapped there. This means addressing really big challenges such as economic inequality, gender discrimination and climate change. And these problems are all fundamentally about power.
To understand their causes and to find solutions, we have to look at who has been making the big decisions, whose interests they have been acting in and whose voices have been excluded. In particular, women's voices and the perspective of women need to be heard, and acted on. We also have to look at who has the responsibility and the ability to put things right – and very often that means challenging governments to make better decisions.
"Oxfam keeps criticizing big companies. Are you anti-business?"
We've been asked this a few times over the years, but it simply isn't true. Much of Oxfam's work involves actively supporting and developing enterprises in communities around the world. We have productive partnerships with many companies, large and small.
What we are against is the kind of business model that maximizes profits by paying poverty wages, endangering workers, trashing the planet, or aggressively dodging tax. We are happy to be seen as anti those kinds of business.
We want to see companies showing that there is a different way of doing business – that profit is not the only thing that matters to them. We want to see governments regulating against bad business practices, and actively supporting more positive ones.
"Oxfam talks as though the economic pie cannot grow, and so it's just a question of sharing that pie out more equally. But that's obviously not true. If the economy grows, there will be more for everyone. And billionaires are the real wealth creators, driving that economic growth, so why shouldn't they be rewarded for that?"
Of course, economic growth can bring benefits with it – but at the moment, we see that those benefits are mostly going to those at the top. 82% of the wealth created in the world last year went to the top 1%. We need both governments and businesses to take action to ensure growth benefits everyone – and particularly those at the bottom, of which women make up the largest percentage. Across the world, women consistently earn less than men and are usually in the lowest paid and least secure forms of work.
While inclusive economic growth is going to play a really important role in ending poverty in many countries, we also know that we have to tackle inequality at the same time, or we'll destroy the planet that we all depend upon. With current levels of inequality, our global economy would need to grow 175 times bigger before everyone was able to earn $5 a day. That's obviously completely unsustainable. We have to find a different and better route to shared prosperity.
We are asking people to help spread the word and to join the movement to fight inequality and beat poverty.
Watch how kids make things fair
How Kids Make Things Fair - 2 Min
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"I can starve, but my children can't" – The true cost of inequality
The figures are staggering. Eighty-two percent of the wealth generated in 2017 went to just one percent of the world's population. In contrast, the 3.7 billion people who make up the poorest half of the world didn't make a penny more.
Not only that, billionaire wealth grew by $762 billion – that's enough money to stamp out extreme poverty seven times over. Last year also saw the biggest-ever increase in billionaires, with one person becoming a member of the super-rich club every two days. Moreover, nine out of 10 of these new billionaires were men. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, women provided $10 trillion in unpaid care to support the global economy.
But these are just numbers. The true cost of inequality is revealed through the testimonies of women like Lan. Her story shows the reality of a truly unjust global village, where a small minority controls the majority of the wealth.
Lan is 32 and a mother of two. Her husband can't work due to illness so she is the family's sole breadwinner. Her job in the garment industry in Dong Nai province, near Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, is both exhausting and insecure. She works at least nine hours a day, six days a week, earning just $1 an hour, to make shoes for global fashion brands. Despite working on 1,200 pairs of shoes a day, she can't afford to buy even one pair for her 12-year-old son.
Worse still, she is separated from her son and her 15-month-old daughter who live 1,500km away in her home province of Thanh Hoa, where her parents look after them. Lan moved away to work so that her children could have a better future – but her low wages and the high cost of living means that she can't afford for them to live with her full time. Organising regular visits home is almost impossible too because travel is expensive and Lan is rarely able to take annual leave.
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Lan soothes her 15-month-old daughter Ha* in the small room she rents in Dong Nai province near Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Ha*, who has been struggling in her mother's absence, had to take a 34-hour bus ride with her grandmother to visit Lan. Photo: Sam Tarling/Oxfam
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Lan and her 12-year-old son Sang* play with a kitten at her parents' house in Thanh Hoa province. It's the first time she has seen her family in nine months. Photo: Sam Tarling/Oxfam
"It's hard because my children cannot live with me," says Lan. "I feel very sorry for my children. They always ask to come here, but I don't allow it. I cannot afford to raise them here. My son really wants to come live with me and study here.
"They have to be left with relatives because I don't have enough money to feed them and pick them up from school. I miss them as I'm far away. I want to be close to my children.
"It's hard to say goodbye to kids because they want me to stay. When I'm back at home, I think about my children and I do not want to leave them and go back here to work."
She adds: "I can't let my children starve or feel that they are not as good as other kids. Well, my kids are not equal to other children because we don't have money. I can starve, but my children can't.
"In my future, I want to work close to home with a steady salary so I can be close to home, close to my children so I can care for them and they can be like their friends. I want to work the hours which have better pay, so I can have my children with me and I can raise them well with good educations. I want my children to be close to their parents so they can have a better life."
Inequality is keeping people trapped in poverty, but together we can fight it.
Please join our campaign to Even it Up.
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