NUSA DUA (dpa-AFX) – Development organizations have demanded more support for poor countries and the fight against growing hunger from the rich economic nations. Ahead of the Group of Great Economic Powers (G20) summit in Bali, Indonesia, Oxfam called for debt relief for low-income countries, taxing crisis-related corporate profits and high private wealth. “The G20 must take concrete action in Bali to tackle shocking social inequality and record profits at the expense of low-income people,” Oxfam’s Tobias Hauschild said ahead of the meeting earlier this week.
This inequality is being exacerbated dramatically by the current multiple crises. Hauschild called for a G20 action plan. The group must do something to counter “the scandalous contradiction” between the dramatically increasing number of starving and poor and the “bubbling crisis profits”.
Up to 828 million people worldwide are affected by hunger. But corporations from the G20 countries made record profits. German companies paid higher dividends than ever before this year. Poor countries would have spent an average of 27.5 percent of the national budget on debt repayment in 2021 – four times more than on health care and twelve times more than on social security.
The G20 countries have a special responsibility, said Stephan Exo-Kreischer, director of the development organization ONE. “Globally, we produce more than enough food to feed everyone on the planet,” he said. Nevertheless, the worst hunger crisis in 40 years is raging. “The situation is more than critical – and not just since Putin’s war of aggression in Ukraine with its consequences for inflation and energy and food prices in the world,” said Exo-Kreischer.
“The G20 process was massively complicated this year by the geopolitical situation,” said Friederike Röder from Global Citizen. “But that does not reduce the responsibility of the G20 countries to act, but increases it dramatically.” As the richest and most powerful countries, they have the power and responsibility to make progress in the fight against climate change, hunger and poverty. However, if they cannot achieve any results, the continued existence of the G20 format must be “fundamentally questioned”./lw/DP/mis