Aid organization Oxfam has criticized the Group of Seven (G7) leading industrialized nations for slashing their development aid budgets, saying ahead of the G7 summit in the French city of Évian on Lake Geneva that funding was cut by $48 billion between 2024 and 2025.
Meanwhile, oil companies have increased their profits during the Iran war to over $400 million per day, according to Oxfam’s calculations.
“Conflict devastates countries and costs countless lives, yet for some it is extraordinarily profitable,” said Oxfam International Executive Director Amitabh Behar in a statement published on Monday. “This is a brutal system that redistributes wealth upwards.”
The organization is calling on the German government and the G7 to boost aid and tax multibillion-dollar fortunes and excess profits in order to increase development funding.
It also urged G7 leaders to suspend bilateral debt payments from low- and middle-income countries, while cancelling unsustainable debt, which forces governments to make “devastating cuts” to essential public services.
The G7 cuts between 2024 and 2025 were the largest in the history of the group, Oxfam said. “This is equivalent to the wealth accumulated by G7 billionaires in just nine days during that same period,” it added, saying the human cost is “catastrophic.”
“Since France last chaired the G7 summit, 44 people have fallen into a humanitarian emergency every single minute.” France last chaired and hosted the G7 summit in 2019 in the coastal town of Biarritz.
The G7 comprises Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Japan, Canada and the US. The current summit runs from Monday until Wednesday.