EXPERT AVAILABILITY

Oxfam has expert spokespeople in Rome and around the world ready to comment on the G20 Summit on a variety of different issues, including vaccine access, climate change, and fair economic recovery for developing countries in English, Spanish, French, and German.

MEDIA BACKGROUNDER

A media backgrounder and press release will also be available on October 28, 2021. Please use the contacts below to ensure you are on the media list.

VACCINE ACCESS PHOTO OPPORTUNITY

Friday, 29 October, 10:00 -11:30 CET, Piazza Vittorio, Rome

Caption: Oxfam, Emergency, Amnesty International campaigners, and members of the People’s Vaccine Alliance organize a photo opportunity highlighting the huge profits pharmaceutical companies are reaping, as activists are calling on G20 leaders to act now and save lives. The G20 leaders look undecided towards a signpost indicating two opposite directions: “People’s vaccine vs Profit vaccine,” while a coffin serves as a reminder of the nearly 5 million lives we have lost to COVID-19.

The G20 have been unwilling to take bold decisions to guarantee equal access to COVID-19 vaccines globally, undoubtedly in part due to the different positions among the G20 leaders. The majority of them (lead by South Africa and India) are in favor of waiving the intellectual property rules and sharing technologies and know-how in order to ensure the increase in the production and make the doses of vaccines sufficient and affordable for all, while the UK, EU, Germany are blocking these proposals, and Italy holds an ambiguous position.

Oxfam calls on G20 leaders:

• Suspend intellectual property rights for COVID-19 vaccines, tests, and treatments, by agreeing to the proposed waiver of the TRIPS Agreement at the World Trade Organization.
• Demand, and use all their legal and policy tools to require pharmaceutical corporations to share Covid-19 data, know-how, and technology with the Covid-19 Technology Access Pool and WHO-South Africa mRNA Technology Transfer Hub.
• Invest in decentralized manufacturing hubs worldwide to move from a world of vaccine monopolies and scarcity to one of vaccine sufficiency and equity in which developing countries have direct control over production capacity to meet their needs.
• Immediately redistribute existing vaccines equitably across all nations to achieve the WHO target of vaccinating 40 percent of people in all countries by the end of 2021 and 70 percent of people in all countries by mid-2022.