Oxfam International’s latest report on the state of inequality around the world hones in on how COVID-19 and a cascade of associated disasters widened the gap between the rich and everyone else in just two words: ‘Inequality Kills.’

The latest report by Oxfam, a U.K. based INGO, as the Davos Agenda begins its 2022 meeting, offers a bleak outlook on the ways in which poverty, hunger, and economic deprivation were all made worse during the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, it went a step further by calling these phenomena ‘economic violence’ — situations where the richest and most powerful people in the world skewed policy choices to favour them and harm others.

Ian Thompson, policy manager at Oxfam Canada, says the organization has used the term before but decided to emphasize it in 2022’s report due to the COVID-19 pandemic’s massive death toll.