Conversation at the UN General Assembly side-event panel on synergies between SDGs and climate action. Credit: Karelia Pallan/Oxfam

By Abby Maxman
NEW YORK, Sep 25 2023 (IPS)

With its global representation, one would expect the UN General Assembly to touch on many diverse issues. And it does. But talks have repeatedly come back to one unifying call: if we want to save ourselves, our planet, and our future, we must act now.

In his remarks at the UN General Debate last Tuesday, President Biden reaffirmed the United States’ commitment to combat the intersecting challenges of the climate crisis, hunger, and worldwide inequality. Yet the following day at the Climate Ambition Summit, the U.S. was not recognized as a climate leader or granted speaking time since the U.S. had no new climate commitments.

In his remarks, President Biden said that extreme weather events around the world “tell the urgent story that awaits us if we fail to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.” Yet, with current policies in place, the United States accounts for more than one-third of planned global oil and gas expansion through 2050 and has the largest shortfall between its climate plans and what is needed to meet its fair share of emissions reductions to prevent catastrophic climate change.

Now President Biden and the United States government need to step up with more investments and more action – not only to be the climate president he promised, but also to realize the United States’ obligation as the largest historical emitter.

Abby Maxman visits Rufisque and Bargny, Senegal, where Oxfam partners are helping communities cope with climate change, protect the environment, and advocate for their rights. Credit: Djibril Dia/Oxfam

But this is not only about combatting climate change. The latest UN report confirms what many of us in the humanitarian sector have been emphasizing for years: the quests to combat climate change, fight inequality, and achieve our Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are not mutually exclusive missions.

During a recent trip to the Sahel, I visited Bargny, a coastal community south of Dakar. There, one woman activist, a mother and grandmother, shared her experience of losing her home to sea-level rise and erosion. She and other displaced families were promised land to resettle, only to have the government grant that land to a foreign company to build a coal-burning power plant.

According to the people we spoke with, this was done without any community consultation or compensation for the people affected. Unfortunately, such injustices are all too common because of our continued investment and reliance on fossil fuels.

Marginalized communities bear the brunt of decisions made on their own land and from thousands of miles away, and these people often have little say in the policies that impact their lives so profoundly.

As we approach the midpoint of the 2030 Agenda, we’re falling far short of our SDG targets that aim to protect communities like Bargny all around the world. Our research at Oxfam showcases the depth of this crisis: as extreme weather events and poverty surge, so does extreme inequality.

The carbon emissions of the richest 1 percent are more than double the emissions of the poorest half of humanity combined. But once we consider the investments of those at the very top, in addition to their lifestyles, the data is even more stark. On average, a billionaire emits a million times more greenhouse gases than the average person, and billionaires are also much more likely to use their wealth to invest in polluting industries.

Whether in response to the recent floods in Libya, rising hunger across nations, or the earth’s hottest and most brutal summer since global records began in 1880, the call for immediate climate action, with emphasis on reducing our dependence on fossil fuels, and safeguards for affected communities has never been louder.

The US, having historically contributed massively to climate pollution, shoulders an immense responsibility to lead the charge against climate disasters and empower and finance local leaders, young people, and marginalized communities.

This past Sunday, many of my Oxfam colleagues were part of the 75,000 people marching through New York City to demand an end to fossil fuels. They held up signs that said “climate change knows no borders.” What we do here – good or bad – affects all the countries represented in the United Nations.

It’s an uphill battle, but every moment, and every decision, counts. While President Biden’s words resonate with hope and commitment, we must see more action or they are merely platitudes. Time is running out, and the world watches, hopeful and expectant, for transformative actions that match these promising words.

Abby Maxman is the President and CEO of Oxfam America

IPS UN Bureau

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Conversation at the UN General Assembly Side Event on Responding to the Urgent Humanitarian Needs in the Horn of Africa. Credit: Karelia Pallan/Oxfam

By Abby Maxman
NEW YORK, Sep 27 2022 (IPS)

Last week, as world leaders gathered in New York for the 77th United Nations General Assembly, one topic came up more than most: looming famine. That’s because despite a global commitment to make famine a relic of the past, it is once again knocking at our door.

In Somaliland two weeks ago, I witnessed communities past their breaking points. Grandparents there told me they could not recall a drought like this in their lifetimes.

At UNGA, I was honored to take part in many discussions on this and other topics – in particular a panel about the urgent humanitarian needs in the Horn of Africa. The region is facing several interlinked issues, including hunger, conflict, climate, and COVID-19. As we discuss – and more importantly, respond to – the crisis, we should keep in mind three themes: the urgency of the moment, the need for more access and more funding, and the implementation of a systemic solution.

The humanitarian crisis in the Horn needs to be at the top of the international agenda, and we need commitment, resources and action urgently. We have seen the warning signs that famine is coming for quite some time – and now we have been warned that it could be declared in Somalia as soon as next month.

Often, the international community is reactionary to crises, but this time we must also be anticipatory in assessing and responding to the needs of the region. In my trip to Somaliland, I spoke to farmers, pastoralists, and visited communities impacted by conflict, climate, and COVID-19. It was my first visit back to Somaliland in more than 20 years, which offered an interesting perspective of the arc of change.

Abby Maxman speaks with Safia, a woman forced to leave her home in Somaliland amid the drought and growing hunger. Credit: Chris Hufstader/Oxfam

Their shared experience is clear: their livelihoods and way of life – and that of their ancestors – are in danger and the need for action now is more urgent than ever. It is dispiriting that these preventable tragedies continue to repeat when the world has the resources and know-how to prevent them.

I spoke with Safia, a 38-year-old divorced mother of eight children, who lost 90% of her livestock. She stayed as long as she could in her community until she felt unsafe as the weak and dead livestock attracted hyenas at night, compelling her to make the five-day journey to reach the Dur-Dur IDP (Internally Displaced Person) camp near Burao.

At Dur Dur they were welcomed with clean water, some food, and materials to build a shelter. She and her children have been there for about three months. They are struggling to get enough food and might eat one meal a day, if they can. Oxfam and others are there offering support, but it’s not nearly enough to meet their basic needs.

Safia’s experience was just one of countless more of those who are bearing the brunt of the dual global hunger and climate crises that has been brought on by distant forces who are prioritizing profits over people and planet.

Earlier this year, Oxfam’s research estimated that one person is dying from acute hunger in the region every 48 seconds. Since then, the situation has only gotten worse. We have a narrow window of opportunity to stave off hunger in the horn. It is not too late to avert disaster, but more needs to be done immediately.

We know that anticipatory action saves lives, livelihoods, and scarce aid money, and across Oxfam and with our partners we have been sounding the alarm of this slow, onset emergency at local, national, and global levels for the past two years. Yet we are witnessing a system that is failing the people who are least responsible for this crisis.

We need more access and a lot more funding that supports frontline organizations and leaders. During the panel, it was encouraging to hear Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Second Martin Griffiths put such emphasis on funding local organizations and leaders who have the knowledge, access, and courage to make real impact.

Local organizations know where the most vulnerable people are located, they can reach disaster zones quickly, and they understand the languages, cultures, geography, and political realities of the affected communities far better than outsiders.

These local leaders should be given the resources and space to make decisions to have the most effective response that will save lives now and in the long run. This may mean that international donors and organizations need to be more flexible in how they coordinate, fund, and implement a humanitarian response. The old way may not be the most effective – in fact we know it is not – especially where there are access challenges.

Finally, we must take a systemic approach in tackling these issues. We know that hunger, climate, and conflict do not happen in silos – they are inextricably linked. We must make sure we are fighting these interlinked crises, especially hunger and climate, together.

Climate change is causing more extreme weather events like droughts, floods, and heatwaves, which devastate crops and displace vulnerable communities. In fact, hunger has more than doubled in 10 of the worst climate hotspots in recent years.

Countries that have contributed the least to emissions are bearing the worst impacts of the climate crisis, while fossil fuel companies see record-breaking profits. Less than 18 days of profits from fossil fuel companies could cover the whole UN humanitarian appeal of $48.82 billion for 2022.

These conversations and convenings are important, but we must do more than raise the alarm – we must see action to follow them up. I hope that leaders recommit the political will to fulfill their moral obligation to meet this crisis in the Horn head on.

Safia is doing all she can to ensure her family’s survival – we must see leaders do all in their power, right now, to make sure she and millions more get the urgent aid they need now to survive, and see their right to a safe, healthy future recognized and realized in years to come.

Abby Maxman is President and CEO Oxfam America.

IPS UN Bureau

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President of the General Assembly opens 75th General Debate. Credit: United Nations

By Abby Maxman
NEW YORK, Sep 23 2020 (IPS)

President Trump took the UN stage to settle scores and shift blame as he sought to spin an alternate version of his administration’s response to the pandemic.

He condemned the ‘one-sided’ Paris Agreement as the US battles devastating wildfires, bragged about promoting peace while federal agents attack protestors in US streets, touted women’s rights while slashing longstanding US support for women’s health programs, and extolled his COVID-19 response as the US surpasses a death toll of 200,000.

President Trump also pitched his vision of a global order driven by narrow, competing national interests – one at odds with the UN Charter agreed 75 years ago to pick up the pieces from the Second World War.

The UN was founded to remind us that no matter our differences, we’re all on the same side when it comes to global problems like COVID-19 and the climate crisis. When humanity is faced with challenges that ignore national borders, there are no one-sided deals.

As this global pandemic has only reinforced, America can only be great – and safe – when we work with others to solve the problems facing humanity. An effective COVID-19 response must be founded on scientific evidence, cooperation, and meeting the needs of the most vulnerable in society.

But President Trump prioritizes the health of the markets over people and political spin instead of scientific information, deferring to the wealthiest 1% instead of the rest of us. His lack of leadership has cost American lives and delays the much-needed recovery.

While a safe and effective vaccine can be a way out of this nightmare, and researchers funded by the US government are racing to find it, making sure vaccines are available and affordable to everyone is equally important. COVID-19 anywhere is COVID-19 everywhere.

The Trump administration claims to have great pride for its leadership at the UN and as an agent of peace and human rights around the globe, while simultaneously undermining some of its most vital tenets and goals.

Indeed, the world listens closely, but what they have heard from the Trump administration has undermined our role as a leader and albeit flawed, proponent of peace in the world. Peace stems not from strength but from mutual respect and a shared commitment to rules that benefit everyone.

Solutions to the poverty, inequality, and injustice so many are experiencing both here in the United States and around the world can only be found by working together for shared progress, not by turning inward or trying to make gains at the expense of families and communities elsewhere.

We will prosper together, or suffer apart.

Meanwhile, Trump in his address said: It is my profound honor to address the United Nations General Assembly. 75 years after the end of World War Two and the founding of the United Nations, we are once again engaged in a great global struggle.

We have waged a fierce battle against the invisible enemy — the China Virus — which has claimed countless lives in 188 countries. In the United States, we launched the most aggressive mobilization since the Second World War.

We rapidly produced a record supply of ventilators — creating a surplus that allowed us to share them with friends and partners all around the globe. We pioneered life-saving treatments, reducing our fatality rate 85 percent since April.

Thanks to our efforts, 3 vaccines are in the final stage of clinical trials. We are mass producing them in advance so they can be delivered immediately upon arrival. We will distribute a vaccine, we will defeat the virus, we will end the pandemic, and we will enter a new era of unprecedented prosperity, cooperation and peace.

As we pursue this bright future, we must hold accountable the nation which unleashed this plague onto the world: China.

In the earliest days of the virus, China locked down travel domestically while allowing flights to leave China and infect the world. China condemned my travel ban on their country, even as they cancelled domestic flights and locked citizens in their homes.

The Chinese government, and the World Health Organization — which is virtually controlled by China — falsely declared that there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission. Later, they falsely said people without symptoms would not spread the disease.

The United Nations must hold China accountable for their actions. In addition, every year China dumps millions and millions of tons of plastic and trash into the oceans, overfishes other countries’ waters, destroys vast swaths of coral reef, and emits more toxic mercury into the atmosphere than any country anywhere in the world.

China’s carbon emissions are nearly twice what the U.S. has, and it’s rising fast. By contrast, after I withdrew from the one-sided Paris Climate Accord, last year America reduced its carbon emissions by more than any country in the agreement.

Those who attack America’s exceptional environmental record while ignoring China’s rampant pollution are not interested in the environment. They only want to punish America and I will not stand for it.

If the United Nations is to be an effective organization, it must focus on the real problems of the world. This includes terrorism, the oppression of women, forced labor, drug trafficking, human and sex trafficking, religious persecution, and the ethnic cleansing of religious minorities.

America will always be a leader in human rights. My administration is advancing religious liberty, opportunity for women, the decriminalization of homosexuality, combatting human trafficking, and protecting unborn children.

We also know that American prosperity is the bedrock of freedom and security all over the world. In three short years, we built the greatest economy in history — and we are quickly doing it again. Our military has increased substantially in size. We spent $2.5 trillion over the last 4 years on our military. We have the most powerful military anywhere in the world, and it’s not even close.

We stood up to decades of China’s trade abuses. We revitalized the NATO Alliance where other countries are now paying a much more fair share. We forged historic partnerships with Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador to stop human smuggling.

We are standing with the people of Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela in their righteous struggle for freedom. We withdrew from the terrible Iran Nuclear Deal and imposed crippling sanctions on the world’s leading state sponsor of terror. We obliterated the ISIS caliphate 100 percent, killed its founder and leader, Al-Baghdadi, and eliminated the world’s top terrorist, Qasem Soleimani.

This month we achieved a peace deal between Serbia and Kosovo. We reached a landmark breakthrough with two Peace Deals in the Middle East — after decades of no progress.

Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain all signed a historic peace agreement at the White House, with many other Middle Eastern countries to come. They are coming fast and they know it’s great for them, and it’s great for the world.

These groundbreaking peace deals are the dawn of the new Middle East. By taking a different approach, we have achieved different outcomes. Far superior outcomes. We took an approach and the approach worked. We intend to deliver more peace agreements shortly, and I have never been more optimistic for the future of the region.

There is no blood in the sand. Those days are hopefully over. As we speak, the United States is also working to end the war in Afghanistan — and we are bringing our troops home. America is fulfilling our destiny as peacemaker. But it is peace through strength.

We are stronger now than ever before, our weapons are at an advanced level like we’ve never had before, like frankly we’ve never even thought of having before, and I only pray to God that we never have to use them. For decades, the same tired voices proposed the same failed solutions, pursuing global ambitions at the expense of their own people.

But only when you take care of your own citizens, will you find a true basis for cooperation. As President, I have rejected the failed approaches of the past — and I am proudly putting America First, just as you should be putting your countries first.

That’s okay, that’s what you should be doing. I am supremely confident that next year, when we gather in person, we will be in the midst of one of the greatest years in our history and frankly, hopefully, in the history of the world.

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Credit: Oxfam America

By Abby Maxman
BOSTON, USA, May 11 2020 (IPS)

NGOs, at the international, national – and most of all local – level are on the frontlines every day.

I just heard from Oxfam staff in Bangladesh, that when asked whether they were scared to continue our response with the Rohingya communities in Cox’s Bazar, they replied: “They are now my relatives. I care about them — and this is the time they need us most.’”

These people – and those that they and others are supporting around the globe – are at the heart of this crisis and response.

As we talk about global figures and strategies, we must remember we are talking about parents who must decide whether they should stay home and practice social distancing or go to work to earn and buy food so their children won’t go hungry; women who constitute 70% of the workers in the health and social sector globally; people with disabilities and their carers; those who are already far from home or caught in conflict; people who don’t know what information to believe and follow, as rumours swirl.

Looking more broadly, we see that the COVID-19 crisis is exposing our broken and unprepared system, and it is also testing our values as a global community. COVID-19 is adding new and exacerbating existing threats of conflict, displacement, gender-based violence, climate change, hunger and inequality, and too many are being forced to respond without the proper resources – simple things like clean water, soap, health care and shelter. We must be creative and nimble to adapt our response in this new reality.

Most vulnerable communities

We know too well that when crisis hits, women, gender diverse persons, people with disabilities and their carers, the elderly, the poor, and the displaced suffer the worst impacts as existing gender, racial, economic and political inequalities are exposed.

Abby Maxman

Access

As we continue to ramp up our response, we must have access to the communities most in need. Likewise, COVID-19 cannot be used as an excuse to stop those greatest in need from accessing humanitarian aid.

Border closures are squeezing relief supply and procurement chains; Lockdowns and quarantines are blocking relief operations; And travel restrictions for aid workers have been put in place, disrupting their ability to work in emergency response programs.

Authorities should absolutely take precautions to keep communities safe, but we need to work at all levels to also ensure life-saving aid can still get through and people’s rights are upheld.

Local and national NGOs are on the frontline of the COVID-19 response, and communities’ access to the essential services and lifesaving assistance they provide must be protected. We also know that with effective community engagement, we can gain better and more effective access to communities.

Humanitarian NGOs and partners are adapting our approaches to continue vital humanitarian support while fulfilling our obligation to “do no harm.”

This adaptive approach, and our experience of ‘safe programming,’ shifting to remote management where possible; and scaling back some operations where necessary—will all be crucial as COVID-19 restrictions continue to amplify protection concerns and risk of sexual exploitation and abuse.

Funding

To mount an effective response, we must draw on our collective experience, but this crisis also offers an opportunity to change the way we work, including setting up new funding mechanisms to allow our system to leverage the complementary roles we all play in a humanitarian response.

Overall, NGOs urgently need funding that is flexible, adaptive, and aligned with Grand Bargain commitments. Our work is well underway, but more is needed to get resources to the frontlines.

We need to better resource country based pooled funds, which are crucial for national and local NGOs. Now more than ever, donors must support flexible mechanisms to increase funding flows to NGO partners.

Next Steps

In closing, the international community needs to come together to battle this pandemic in an inclusive and a responsive way that puts communities at the heart of solutions. Even while we respond in our own communities, we must see and act beyond borders if we are ever to fully control this pandemic.

The planning and response to COVID-19 need to be directly inclusive of local and national NGOs, women’s rights organizations, and refugee-led organizations leaders. We must address this new threat, while still responding to other pressing needs for a holistic response.
This means continuing our response to the looming hunger crisis, maintaining access to humanitarian aid, and supporting existing services including sexual and reproductive health and gender-based violence services.

We need to ensure humanitarian access is protected to reach the most vulnerable.

And funding needs to be quickly mobilized through multiple channels to reach NGOs and must be flexible both between needs and countries.

This much is clear: We cannot address this crisis for some and not others. We cannot do it alone. The virus can affect anyone but disproportionately affects the most marginalized. It is our collective responsibility to ensure that our global response includes everyone.

We owe it to those dedicated staff and their honorary “relatives” in Cox’s Bazar, and all those like them around the globe, to get this right.

This article was adapted from Abby Maxman’s comments as the NGO representative at the UN’s Launch of the Updated COVID-19 Global Humanitarian Response Plan on May 7, 2020.

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Contaminated flood waters in Beira, Mozambique after Cyclone Idai hit presented a significant risk for water-borne diseases like cholera. Credit: Sergio Zimba/Oxfam

By Abby Maxman
BOSTON, USA, Sep 19 2019 (IPS)

As the UN General Assembly begins, we are once again ringing the alarm on the urgent issues of climate and development that demand our global attention and action. And I worry yet again leaders will not heed the warnings and not act with the clarity and at the scale the issues we’re here to tackle demand.

This year the global meetings open with the electrifying cry of young people demanding our attention and our action on climate. I hope this will push us to refocus and deliver on the promises we have made to the world’s most vulnerable people—and to future generations to whom we are bequeathing a planetary disaster.

When we’re talking about the climate crisis and the profound problems the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aim to address, we cannot stress enough just how high the stakes are. These high-level meetings are the perfect platform for nations to step up and take action – and we hope to see that, but initial signs from countries have been discouraging.

If not now, then when can we expect to see these actions taken?

We can’t keep pushing pledges and actions to a future date – we are in crisis now. Oxfam believes that multilateral approaches are key, and will continue pressing for action on these issues, holding the powerful to account to ensure the voices and needs of the world’s most vulnerable – who these meetings are designed to serve – are addressed.

The unprecedented and remarkable activism led by young people must be heeded and translated into concrete action. Intent to act is not enough – we need to see every nation, especially the wealthy and high-emitting ones, committing to combat this crisis together with urgent and drastic steps.

Abby Maxman, President and CEO of Oxfam America

Particularly in making good on wealthy nations’ climate finance commitments which are continuing to fall short of what is needed to protect the world’s poor from the devastating impacts of climate change.

We welcome any commitments made, but we don’t expect to hear enough of those to show leaders are taking this seriously. Too many are delaying, and we are still lacking leadership from the world’s major players and polluters. If anything, we are seeing potentially devastating rollbacks on climate issues in countries like the United States, when we have no time to waste.

Politicians need to go further and faster and to listen and act on the leadership of the students and strikers on the streets, the indigenous peoples and communities on the frontline of climate change, and to the constituencies that they represent. Oxfam is working with our partners to ensure that climate solutions don’t come at the expense of vulnerable communities.

The climate crisis is a defining issue of our day, and it is inextricably linked with other challenges we must face together like the growing global economic equality – the fact that too many still live in poverty and without the basic services and resources to live a healthy, safe and happy life. The SDG’s aim to address these issues and more, but they are far off track.

Two successive cyclones hit southern Africa within 6 weeks of each other, and Oxfam has been responding with clean water, sanitation, and hygiene support to avert cholera and other water-borne diseases.

Oxfam is disappointed by the lack of progress made on the SDGs – the latest Secretary General report shows that the world will not meet the SDGs by 2030. The lack of proper financing, growing inequality, gender injustice, and closing civic space are fundamental constraints to the achievement of the SDGs.

Oxfam is highly concerned that the world is not coming together to make the right political choices and fulfill previous commitments on development finance, which is key for reaching any of the SDGs. We need healthy national fiscal and monetary policies, and people-centered multilateralism with new rules and institutions that seek a more human economy.

At high-level meetings on the SDGs, civil society is provided with very limited time and opportunities to engage in the political process and outcome documents. This year, the outcome document for the SDG Summit was finalized before the actual proceedings of the events in both July and September, which is a clear signal these moments aren’t open for dialogue.

We need to have an open and inclusive process, with more concrete and aggressive actions to address the urgent and interrelated issues the SDGs tackle. We can only achieve the SDGs if we collectively strengthen global and national movements for human economics, accountable capitalism, and a new generation of public and private institutions and norms.

These are massive and complex issues that need sweeping yet specific actions. We must see countries step up and commit to making those now. This work at the UNGA is an opportunity to bring the voices, priorities, challenges and solutions to the table.

I hope we leave this General Debate, Climate Action and SDG Summits with a feeling of momentum – that we are not letting down our young people and the people facing the harsh realities of the climate crisis. Oxfam works with the world’s most vulnerable communities impacted by climate change, disasters, and poverty every day—and we are committed to being a part of the solution that addresses the crisis they feel so acutely.

*Prior to joining Oxfam in 2017, Abby Maxman served as Deputy Secretary General of CARE International in Geneva, providing leadership across the CARE confederation. She previously served as Vice President of International Programs and Operations for CAREUSA, and in other country and regional leadership roles in Africa, Latin America, Asia and the Middle East. Before CARE, Maxman had assignments with the U.S. Peace Corps, German Agency for Technical Cooperation, UN World Food Programme, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

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By Abby Maxman
BOSTON, Massachusetts, Sep 22 2017 (IPS)

Two years ago, world leaders joined together to endorse a new and ambitious agenda not to reduce poverty but to eradicate it, not to lessen hunger but to end it once and for all, and not to overlook inequality but jointly to attack it.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) broke new ground in the fight against poverty by moving beyond social development targets to better protect our fragile planet, reduce economic and social inequalities, and promote human rights. Today, the hard work to achieve this ambition is just beginning.

Delivering on the development goals will not be a technocratic exercise. Systematic and efficient monitoring, including good quality data, is crucial to tracking progress, but action on this front has been too slow.

Let’s look at inequality, for example. The importance of a global goal specifically aimed at tackling income inequality cannot be overstated. Extreme economic inequality has been shown to impede poverty alleviation, slow economic growth, compound gender inequality, drive inequality in health and education outcomes, undermine economic mobility over generations, fuel crime, undermine social cohesion, and harm democracy.

But turning the inequality goal into a reality requires a fundamental change of approach on how governments take on vested interests, and how resources are shared.

Earlier this year, we at Oxfam’s pointed out that just eight men own the same wealth as half of humanity, the poorest 3.6 billion people. Worse yet, the gap between rich and poor is growing in countries across the world, in countries rich and poor.

At the same time, there are no shortage of tools proven to reduce the gap between rich and poor. What we need then are transparency, data, and accountability to ensure governments are using them.

Oxfam’s contribution to the effort is a global index that ranks 152 countries by the policies they have in place to reduce economic inequality, including fair and effective taxation, spending on health, education and social protection, as well as fair labor policies.

Our first version of this index, which we launched in July, found that the vast majority of governments – three quarters of those in our index – are doing less than half of what they could be doing to tackle inequality.

Sweden, Belgium and Denmark top the index because of high levels of social spending and good protections for workers. Nigeria, Bahrain and Myanmar come in at the bottom of the index because of exceptionally low levels of government spending on health, education and social protection, extremely bad records on labor and women’s rights, and a tax system that overburdens the poorest in society and fails to tax its wealthiest citizens.

But this is not a clear-cut story of rich country good, poor country bad.

The US, for example, ranks 23rd out of 152. That may not sound too bad, but it is not great for the richest country on earth. In fact, the US comes at the bottom among G7 countries when it comes to fighting inequality, and ranks 21st out of 35 OECD countries.

And even those countries at the very top of the list could do more. For example, Belgium’s corporate tax incentives allow big business to avoid paying their fair share, and Denmark has cut taxes for the richest. Worse yet, many countries at the top effectively export inequality by acting as tax havens.

More than $100 billion in tax revenues are lost by poor countries every year because of corporate tax dodgers — enough money to provide an education for the 124 million children who aren’t in school and fund healthcare interventions that could prevent the deaths of at least six million children.

Our hope with this Index is to build a public conversation about how to tackle this inequality crisis. Governments need to build fairer tax systems, uphold the rights of workers, and invest more money in our public services. We will only achieve the SDGs if our economies work for all of us, not just a few.

While achieving the SDGs will indeed be expensive, the world has enough resources. Now it’s up to governments to find the political will to allocate these resources towards ending extreme poverty, realizing human rights, and achieving sustainable development that truly leaves no one behind. And it’s up to us to hold them accountable to do so.

No doubt about it, we have much work ahead of us. And given everything else that’s going on in the world, it certainly feels like a rather daunting task. But together, we can be the generation that ends extreme poverty once and for all.

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