welcome to hardtalk, i'm stephen sackur. here's the good news. the proportion of the world's population living in extreme poverty has declined sharply over the past 30 years. here's the bad news. still close to one in 20 of all the world's people relies on humanitarian assistance for survival. with many nations cutting their aid budgets, international ngos remain a linchpin of the global aid system.

but are they fit for purpose? well, my guest is danny sriskandarajah, chief executive of oxfam great britain. he promised to reimagine what aid would look like. has he succeeded? danny sriskandarajah, welcome to hardtalk. thank you, stephen. let's start with those two different ways of looking at what's happening to the world's poorest people. one in 20, almost, still suffering extreme poverty, even as global poverty rates decline do you think

that the aid system is failing those people? well, let's just start with what's happening around the world at the moment. we think, for the first time since records began 30 years ago, there's actually been a rise in extreme poverty in the last 12 months. so the combination of covid disruptions, the war in ukraine, rising prices around the world, has actually led to a great reversal in that general decline in extreme poverty. hang on a minute. that's an important phrase — a "reversal". it could be a blip because it is important to emphasise that the overall trajectory of that graph on extreme poverty is very much downward. so if it's a 12—month thing, maybe it's a blip. well, i hope it will be a blip, but i don't think so. the signs are rather ominous. as you say, many of us who've worked in the aid system have been part of incredible progress around the world over the last 30 years. but i think we're seeing today a combination of climate breakdown, making countries that are already vulnerable, more vulnerable.

rising inequality around the world — basic food, fuel, fertiliser prices rising starkly around the world. and so we're leading to, you know, it's leading to a rise in extreme poverty, but also hunger. one in 23 people on the planet are expected to be in need of humanitarian assistance this year. that's more than at any time since the second world war. where worries you the most right now? it would probably be east africa. i was in somalia a few months ago and saw a heartbreaking situation. we estimate that someone is dying every 36 seconds in east africa because of the worst drought in a0 years. it's clearly exacerbated by climate breakdown, climate breakdown that the people in east africa had almost nothing to do with. and so it really is a tragedy that we're seeing rising levels of hunger — famine looming in a region.

and, of course, the resources, especially from donor countries, just not being delivered into a system... really? the un, of course, tries to raise emergency monies from the nations of the world forjust these sorts of crises. there's the world food programme, a whole host of other un and multilateral agencie which go in to crisis situations and try to alleviate the worst of the suffering and certainly to avoid famine. is that not working? the system has worked in the past. the last time we were worried about drought conditions in east africa, the international community did come together, did deliver billions of dollars worth of aid. organisations like 0xfam were part of a relief... ..relief operation that saved lives. this time around, only a fraction of the resource that the un and organisations like ours need are being delivered. take the uk, for example, which has cut its aid budget just at a time of rising humanitarian need —

is only delivering a fraction of the aid that it delivered a few years ago. and so there is a chronic underfunding of resources needed in the humanitarian system at the moment. now, you have been running one of the world's best known charitable aid organisations for what, the best part of four years. would you agree with this statement, which was written recently by sanjay reddy, who's an associate professor based at the new school for social research in new york. he said, "the truth is, aid as currently organised, "is a fig leaf that fails to cover u "a naked truth — that of a severely limited effort "to address global problems and repair historical and present day injustice" — ie, the aid system as we know it, both governmental and nongovernmental, simply doesn't work. it's not fit for purpose. i think professor reddy is spot—on on the fact that we need a reset. we need to re—imagine how to fund global public goods.

the idea that organisations like ours go cap in hand to beg for resources after disaster strikes was always problematic. it's increasingly nonsensical. we need a new way of pre—positioning resources, particularly in the face of climate breakdown, for governments and societies and ngos to be able to respond or, betterstill, build resilience in societies to minimise the damage being done by humanitarian disasters. we need to reimagine the entire system. well, i'll bring you back to the entire system and the big picture in a moment, but i do want to get deep into your responsibilities, which is for running 0xfam gb, being a key member of the oxfam international network. when you took yourjob four years ago or so, you said, "i promise you, "the 0xfam of tomorrow is going to be unrecognisable." you talked about reimagining the way big ngos do aid. have you delivered? i think we are delivering. 0xfam today already looks very

different than it did four years ago, and very different to different periods of our 80—year history. we're no longer a top down delivery vehicle for charitable giving. we're much more of a global network that's taking action to save lives, working in some of the most difficult contexts in the world. but we're also trying to change systems to call out systemic discrimination, oppression, calling out inequality increasingly. and so we are... it's difficult to do that. sorry to interrupt, but it is difficult to do that, calling out these systemic problems, the discrimination, when you in your own organisation are desperately tainted by a scandal which was all about a toxic power dynamic and indeed involved discrimination and abuse of females by white 0xfam male staff members. look, i think what happened in haiti in the earthquake response ten years ago, or so, was abhorrent.

we let ourselves down, we let our supporters down, but most importantly, we let the people we were there to serve down. and to people who don't remember, just to remind them, the allegations, which indeed your own internal investigations concluded were well founded, involved staff members of oxfam abusing their position, routinely using prostitutes, some of them using underage girls while on a mission of emergency relief in haiti after the 2010 earthquake. and it took years for 0xfam to publicly acknowledge what had happened. when i started in 2019, 0xfam was already undergoing a deep reflection about these failings, coming to the realisation that doing harm in the name of doing good was not good enough, that we have to focus on preventing and minimising the abuse of power within our organisations if we are to be taken credibly

across the world. and so a lot of the transformation, the culture change that we've been driving internally has been about putting in the systems and processes to make sure that we can address misconduct and harassment where it occurs. how do you do it? we have a compulsory code of conduct that every employee now signs. we have mandatory training. we have professional staff who are versed in how to handle reports of harassment and misconduct. and we dismiss or take action when we receive those reports. and importantly, we're also very transparent about where we're receiving reports of misconduct and publish our actions. isn't one of the problems, though, that there is a fundamental problematic power dynamic at play in a lot of the work you do in some of the most disadvantaged and poorest countries in the world? you send out your staff — they are largely, you know, if they're coming from the uk, western staff, to work with these poor people.

not all of them, but some of them, are male staff members working with vulnerable females. i'm going to quote you a writer on international development called deborah doane, who says, "look, sexual abuse is about money and power, "and these are key pillars on which the aid system "in so many contexts has been built. "rich donors of the north "have the money, and they have all the power, "and those who are beholden to their services have neither." and that's a dynamic that it's very hard to shift. well, i think it is... it's hard to shift, but we have to shift it. gone are the days when, you know, northern or rich country organisations can parachute into poorer countries and save lives. we need... you do still do that, don't you? we are building a new type of network that's based on mutuality and solidarity. almost all our staff across the world come from either the country that they're working in, or the region that they're working in. we do have international staff who move about our system,

but we're trying to build a network in which we minimise the risk of abuse of power in context. so...i saw a phrase you'd used and i was fascinated and i wanted to have you explain to me exactly what you meant by it. you said you were going to "decolonise aid". is this in practical terms what you are talking about? this is one aspect of what we're talking about. another aspect is to make sure that we shift power and resources to the people and communities that we serve, that we don't sit somehow in our headquarters in oxford in the uk, and make decisions about how resources should be spent. and i think that's a clue for our entire sector that if we really do want to address poverty, fight discrimination, tackle inequality, we have to build from below and we have to empower the change—makers who are at the front line of tackling poverty. well, i can only imagine, then, how depressed you were when you received an email...

i'm guessing you received it because the times reported it in april 2021, from a female staff member in the uk head office in oxford, which, according to the times report, said this... the woman who was not named, talked of, quote, "a toxic culture which continues". she said she was aware of five country offices where safeguarding and bullying issues are well known. but the perpetrators — that is, the 0xfam employees — remain in employment. have you addressed that? we have. at the time, we had reported to our donors and to our regulator that we had ongoing investigations in several countries. there was a former secretary of state for international development in the uk... can you tell me which countries she was referring to? she referred to the democratic republic of congo, primarily. right. she did say she was aware of five country offices where safeguarding and bullying issues continued. i'm sure that our safeguarding teams, who would have liaised with her, would be well aware. so you can sit here today and say you're entirely confident that the legacy

of haiti and drc, where you also had systemic problems, that is over, is it? because many of your donors don't appear to be so confident. if one looks at the revenues you get, they're still actually significantly below the level they were at before the haiti scandal broke. so, two things, i think. 0ne, no organisation can ever say it's free from misconduct or harassment, but what we can, and i can say, is that we have put in place systems, processes, and a process of culture change that reduces the risk of misconduct and, importantly, where misconduct is identified, that we take action. 0n the other hand, if you look at our supporter base and our accounts at the moment, many of our international institutional donors and many, many of our individual supporters, have continued to support 0xfam, because when i meet supporters or volunteers, they see that we are an organisation that's

taking these issues seriously. they also tell me that we're an organisation that is taking action to fight growing inequality, to tackle climate injustice, and are inspired by the vision of this global network for social change. you've very neatly led me back to the big picture, which i know matters to you a great deal. it strikes me that, since you've taken over leadership of oxfam, you have become a pretty politicised advocate for political and social change on a global scale. you have described your feelings sometimes as a desire to express constructive outrage. do you think outrage is a useful emotion to be expressing when you are actually trying to lead an organisation that is dealing with the day—to—day emergencies that represent people on the edge of survival? so what i've discovered is that indignation, outrage, if you want to call it, has been...

it was your phrase. ..hard—wired into the dna of oxfam. we recently celebrated our 80th anniversary, and we were founded in the dark days of world war ii in oxford as the committee for famine relief, by eight ordinary individuals who were outraged by the fact that famine was allowed to be happening in nazi—occupied greece, and set about doing two things, importantly. one, to raise resources to provide food relief for people in greece, and secondly — importantly — to speak truth to power, to campaign against the uk government's and the allied governments�* policy of blockading nazi—occupied greece. all through the last 80 years, 0xfam has been at the vanguard of various socialjustice issues. yes, of course, taking action to save lives, change lives, but also speaking truth to power — speaking out. but the point is, you need to work with governments, and if you are to get this completely revamped, much more effective multilateral

system of aid to work, governments have to be involved. and yet, you seem to spend a whole lot of your time criticising governments for their failings. so, 0xfam's charitable mission has, and always will be, to end poverty. but what we're realising is that the only way to end poverty is to tackle inequality and injustice. famine exists today not because of a scarcity of food, but because food is mal—distributed. poverty exists today not just because there's a shortage of resources, but because we're seeing eye—watering levels of accumulation. we published a report recently called survival of the richest that showed that, in the last two years, two years of a global pandemic, two—thirds of all new wealth created around the world went into the hands of the richest i%. that's just... it's a stain on our moral conscience that a time when the vast majority of people in the world

are feeling uncertain about their future, that those who have wealth are being allowed to accumulate wealth at eyewatering unprecedented rates. and i'm tempted to say that is capitalism. and is it the role of the leader of oxfam to launch an all—out attack on global capitalism? it's notjust the leader of oxfam that's doing it. i know it's notjust the leader of oxfam — there are plenty of politicians who do it. i understand that. i'm just wondering whether perhaps you ought to go into politics and leave 0xfam behind, because, you know, it's a question of resources and where you prioritise, where you put your time, your staff's time, resources and effort. if you're going to put so much of it into this, what sounds to many people like overt political advocacy, i'm wondering what's left for actually delivering on the ground in countries like haiti? the vast majority of our time, effort and resources are spent in delivering clean water, delivering cash into some of the most vulnerable communities around the world — in south sudan, in yemen, in iraq, in syria.

a significant and important part of our attention is also, though, spent on trying to challenge what's happening around us. someone needs to be calling out what's happening. the fact that inequality is being left unchecked, that the funding needed to address climate breakdown in some of the poorest and most marginalised countries in the world, despite promises being made by politicians over decades, hasjust not been delivered. and so our role is, just as it always has been, to take action where there's need, but also to speak truth to power. is it effective when you, for example, just on the eve of davos, call for a wealth tax, talk about a fossilfuel tax... i mean, these are radical economic proposals. many people would support them. some would oppose them. but the point is, does it work when you, as head of oxfam, take those positions? do you make any difference? look, i think it's really important that

we air radical ideas. this is the moment in world history where we need a radical rethink about how the global economy delivers a fairer system for all, how we raise those resources to fund climate action, to fund humanitarian need and incremental change. a little bit of tinkering here and there ain't going to cut it. and what we've seen, for example, in recent weeks when we published our latest report is, there is growing interest in just these radical ideas. sure, but again, you're making an appealfor a whole new radical, multilateral, globalised approach, at the very tim the world is showing signs of being ever more polarised and divided by nationalisms, by regional conflict, by big power, divisive politics — you're swimming against a very powerful global tide. i accept that. but i think this is, again, more important than ever that organisations like ours, networks like ours, do that

because this is a moment in which we as people, as citizens, need to come together to build...to build a positive momentum, to come up with creative ideas at a time when our politicians and our... ..our capitalist leaders are failing us. the next point that some make who resent your interventions on the eve of davos, things like that, is that they say these international aid agencies for years have been bloated bureaucracies, which, frankly, spend more time looking after their own interests than the interests of the poor people in the poorest parts of the world that they claim they're out to serve they look at, for example, salary levels. your own salary is published. you're very open about it. it's not...i mean, it's relatively high in uk terms, but in international terms, it's not particularly high for the leader of an important organisation. but some charities, look at the international rescue committee in new york city, are led by individuals,

in this case david miliband, a former british politician who is earning pretty much $1,000,000 a year as the leader of a humanitarian organisation. do you think that weakens the case of humanitarians, when they're on that kind of money? it's up to the board of international rescue committee, or any organisation, to set its own... of course it is, but what's your opinion? so my opinion comes back to the lessons of the last few years for organisations like ours, which is that it's really important that we walk the talk — that if we're to be taken credibly and seriously, then we also need to strive to be a more inclusive organisation. so, for example in 0xfam, yes, i'm lucky enough to be paid a good salary, and importantly, we're committing to reducing inequality within our own organisation, so we publish the pay ratio between my pay and that of the lowest paid, or median members of median pay in our own organisations, and are ambitious about making our own organisation more equitable so that our arguments to make the world fairer

and more equitable are taken more seriously. so i think it's really important that we practise what we preach. we began by trying to make sense and interpret sometimes complicated statistics when it comes to hunger and extreme poverty. you'll know that there are data analysts, economists, social scientists, who look at the data, despite what you've said about the last year, and they are real optimists about the future of humanity. i'm thinking about people like hans rosling and steven pinker. you're at the front line of all of this. are you an optimist or a pessimist about the future of us as a species? so i am an optimist, and i think we can take the actions necessary to address climate change, to deliver a far more equitable planet. i mean, you talked about the sort of history of radical ideas — if we were sitting here 50, 60 years ago and we said what we really need is an international system for aid, where rich countries put aside a portion of their budgets to finance

development around the world, people would have said, that's unrealistic, that's naive, it's never going to happen. and yet we've delivered an aid system. if we'd said a few years ago, there's no way that rich countries would agree to a loss and damage fund to pay for adaptation against climate change in the poorest countries, and yet that's what came out of the last climate negotiations. sure. all i would say is that there's a big difference between agreeing and delivering, whether it be on aid as a proportion of national income, or whether it be on the climate change promises to give some sort of reparations to those countries worst affected, who were not responsible for the emissions in the first place. i think that's where it comes back to the role of civil society. organisations like ours are there to float new ideas, to hold governments to account for that delivery, and why also it's really important that organisations like ours speak out. you know, we are... this is the 75th anniversary

of the signing of the universal declaration on human rights, but almost everywhere we're going backwards, particularly on civic freedoms, on the freedom of assembly, association, of expression. only 3% of the world's population lives in a country where we can enjoy our civic freedoms. and so it really is important, if we're going to have any sort of realistic solutions to these global problems, that we build solidarity across borders, but also invest in the power of people to come up with those solutions that are urgently needed. and there, danny sriskandarajah, we have to leave it, but thank you very much indeed forjoining me on hardtalk. thank you.

hello there. on tuesday, most of us did see some sunshine, but there were certainly quite a few showers across the northwest of the country and, generally for northern areas, it started to get quite windy through the afternoon, and those stronger winds were all tied in with this area of low pressure that over the next few hours will be crossing around about the faroes. but there will be some very strong winds just buffeting northern scotland. now, so far, the strongest wind gust i've seen is south uist, 76 mile an hour gusts here. but the winds will probably pick up a little bit further across orkney and shetland where we could see gusts of around 70, maybe even 80 miles an hourfor a time over the next few hours. so certainly very, very blowy conditions for northern scotland with those severe gales and with that comes the prospect of some localised transport disruption. so, bear that in mind. now away from those very strong winds just running across northern scotland,

we also have plenty of showers for northern ireland, a few for the north—west of england and wales, but drier weather further south. because it's quite windy though, it's not that cold a start to the day as we head into the first part of wednesday. frost free for most with temperatures around three to five degrees. now for wednesday's charts, that area of low pressure is going to be weakening and moving over towards norway. what follows is quite a gusty flow of north westerly winds and a warm front that's going to make its presence felt across northern ireland, the north west of england and wales and south west scotland. it's across these areas where the weather's going to turn damp, some sunshine for northeast scotland and the cloud probably will break to the east of wales, across the midlands, east anglia and southern counts of england. wherever you are, we're looking at a mild day with temperatures quite widely between nine and 11 degrees. now for thursday, we've got more rain on the way. this time across scotland, for the most part, the rain quite heavy. further southwards, i think you'll notice the cloud tending to build in from the west, but there'll still be probably a few cloud breaks coming along.

so, still a little bit of sunshine. the best of that likely across parts of central and eastern england. temperatures on the mild side reaching a high of 13 degrees or so. and really through the rest of the week, high pressure stays to the south of the uk. we continue to get this feed of mild air in until we get to the weekend where things start to get a little bit cooler. so, temperatures over the next few days will stay into double figures before we start to see that cooler but sunnier weather arriving into the weekend.

welcome to newsday, reporting live from singapore, i'm karishma vaswani. the headlines: actor alec baldwin has been charged with involuntary manslaughter over the fatal shooting of a cinematographer on a film set. as myanmar marks the second anniverasary of the miltiary coup, the us announces fresh sanctions on the country. the death toll in the pakistan mosque attack rises to 100 as the authorities call off the search and rescue operation. the search goes on for the tiny radioactive capsule in australia. and welcome to liverpool! eurovision arrives for its official launch as the city that brought us the beatles

stands in for ukraine.