252 men have more than all the women and girls in Africa and Latin America

Every four seconds, one of the ten richest men in the world wins 52,000 euros. In this same fraction of time someone on the planet dies because of inequality. These are the two faces of inequality; two poles increasingly distant, according to the latest Oxfam report

, published this Tuesday. While during the first two years of covid-19, 160 million people were pushed into poverty and 99% of humanity witnessed their economy deteriorate, Amazon mastermind Jeff Bezos; the co-founder of PayPal, Elon Musk, and the creator of Facebook (now Meta) Mark Zuckerberg, among others, saw the zeros in their bank accounts multiply.

The balance was never balanced, but the pandemic tipped one of the plates "unprecedented" and, today, 252 men have more wealth than all the women and girls in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean combined, according to data provided by Forbes magazine and compared in the study. Published in mid-January on the occasion of the Davos Agenda, of the World Economic Forum, the organization affirms that inequality contributes to the death of at least 21,000 people a day. These are conservative estimates based on the number of deaths caused by lack of access to health services, gender-based violence, racial discrimination, hunger and the climate crisis.

Latin America was already the most unequal region before the fateful 2020. Simon Ticehurst, regional director of Oxfam, insists: "The pandemic had a disproportionate impact."

And it is that 30% of deaths from coronavirus were accumulated there despite the fact that its population represents only 8%.

“We are concerned about poverty because it increases vulnerability.

And they have a face: the most affected are Afro-descendants, indigenous people, peasants, women... But what we most regret is that ever-widening gap between those who have almost nothing and those who no longer know what to do with so much.”

What we most regret is the widening gap between those who have almost nothing and those who no longer know what to do with so much

Simon Ticehurst, Oxfam Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean

It is poor who has less than five euros a day. And the face of the “new poor” is the one that was on the limits of the middle class, which for Ticehurst should be subdivided into “middle classes”: “It is not a uniform category. Within this, there are people who border on wealth and people who do not have access to education or health and who live in absolute precariousness. The stories of those suddenly thrown into need are often similar: informal workers, families unable to afford an unexpected expense – such as the death or treatment of one of their relatives – and caregivers (mostly women). “They have been the first to lose their jobs due to the informal nature of their jobs. There was a wave of femicides and more in this area that is so macho and patriarchal. They collapsed.The house became an insecure place for many and they were also burdened with all the care”, she criticizes in a phone call.

Inequality pervades all aspects of life. Health, the first.

Just because of difficult or impossible access to health services, 5.6 million people lose their lives every year. A figure similar to those killed by covid-19. The examples are endless: in São Paulo (Brazil), the life expectancy of the population of the richest areas is 14 years higher than that of the poorest areas; and the breach of this meter in the United States has claimed the lives of 3.4 million black people; Although Central America is responsible for 0.26% of carbon dioxide emissions, it stands out among the most vulnerable regions; 600 million Africans suffer from energy poverty and all related ailments; at least 67,000 women lose their lives each year due to female genital mutilation, or are killed by their partner or ex-partner…

Inequity contributes to the deaths of at least 21,000 people a day

The NGO uses sources from institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, Crédit Suisse or the World Economic Forum, who estimate that the health crisis has caused an increase in inequalities within countries around the world. There is no exception. Since the start of this, every 26 hours a new billionaire has emerged. For the general director of Oxfam in Latin America and the Caribbean, the objective with this comparison is not to blame them: “We do not want to attack people, nor say that they are responsible. It's the system. And it is this one that must try to recover part of that wealth that they gained at the cost of the pandemic; of what has been the extraordinary accumulation. We advocate a solidarity tax and there are antecedents at national scales.Argentina and Brazil did it at the time when they broke the patent on the AIDS vaccine”. For Ticehurst, they are "exceptional measures, for exceptional times." "The long-term actions have to be more progressive tax systems that really redistribute wealth."

Gabriela Bucher, executive director of Oxfam International, is, however, somewhat more critical in presenting the report, as stated in it: “Billionaires have had a luxurious pandemic. Central banks have pumped billions of dollars into the financial markets to save the economy, but much of it has ended up in the pockets of the richest. Vaccines were intended to end this pandemic, but more economically stable governments have allowed tycoons and pharmaceutical monopolies to cut off supplies to billions of people.” For her, the solution does not lie in obtaining “more money”: “That became clear when the States mobilized 16 billion dollars for the response to the pandemic.What is missing is the will and imagination to free ourselves from the suffocating neoliberal model that has brought us to the point where we are.”

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