Third World Debt

How Foreign Debt Undermines Sovereignty: The case of the Global South

1 July 2020 - by Ndongo Samba Sylla

“There is nothing a nation should avoid as much as borrowing money abroad.” So confided Ulysses Grant to Emperor Meiji during his visit to Japan in August of 1879. After giving several examples of nations then enslaved by foreign currency-denominated debt, the eighteenth American president (...)
The debt trap

1 July 2020 - by Eric Toussaint

In 2020, the World Bank (WB) and the IMF will be 76 years old. These two international financial institutions (IFI), founded in 1944, are dominated by the USA and a few allied major powers who work to generalize policies that run counter the interests of the world’s populations. The WB and the (...)
Call of peoples, organizations, movements and networks in North Africa and the Middle East/The Arab region – For the cancellation of debts and dropping of the “free trade” agreements

20 May 2020 - by Collective

To address the Corona pandemic and its severe consequences: the need to break with the tools of imperialist domination over our peoples: indebtedness and “free trade” agreements The people of North Africa and the Middle East/The Arab region are facing a great ordeal in light of the global (...)
UNCTAD calls for aid plan and hard tackles creditors

15 May 2020 - by Milan Rivié

The coronavirus pandemic has triggered a real economic crisis whose effects will be as severe as they are long-lasting, even more so in the countries of the South. In recent days, the international financial institutions’ announcements to cancel their public foreign debt have multiplied. The (...)
Along with Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 300 parliamentarians from around the world are writing to the IMF and World Bank to cancel the debt

15 May 2020 - by Collective

Editor’s note : We are publishing a letter sent to the IMF and the World Bank by 300 worldwide parliamentarians. In this letter the 300 parliamentarians call for the “complete debt remission of the International Development Association’s (IDA) countries by all the main international financial (...)
President Macron never intended to cancel African debt

4 May 2020 - by Pauline Imbach

Had we been born yesterday, we would have been tempted to believe that the question of African debt was finally going to be taken seriously. Emmanuel Macron, wielding a magic wand, was about to cancel the continent’s debts, once and for all. Yet, like every bad magic trick, you could see how he (...)
The Covid-19 pandemic evinces the need to cooperate despite political differences

17 April 2020 - by Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs

The impact of COVID19 can already be measured and will be assessed in the future by the striking numbers of people infected, the unacceptable numbers of deaths, the unquestionable damages to the world economy, production, trade, employment and personal income of millions of people. It is a (...)
A debt jubilee to tackle the Covid-19 health and economic crisis

9 April 2020 - by Collective

The International CADTM network agrees to sign despite the fact that we are opposed to asking the IMF to “introduce clear guidelines for deciding when a debt becomes unsustainable, and to abide by its self-imposed rule that it will only lend to states whose debt is deemed unsustainable in the (...)
COVID-19 and debt in the global south: Protecting the most vulnerable in times of crisis II

2 April 2020 - by Daniel Munevar

This is the second part of a blog series covering the impact of COVID-19 on vulnerable countries in the Global South. [Part 1] analyses the impact of debt burdens on health services. Part 2 discusses how the economic crisis will affect countires in the global south. Part 3 highlights the degree (...)
A debt moratorium for Low Income Economies

27 March 2020 - by Eurodad, Daniel Munevar

Eurodad cost assessment of a debt moratorium to tackle the COVID-19 crisis This briefing provides an assessment of the costs and implications of an immediate debt moratorium for 69 countries classified as Lower Income Economies. A moratorium on public external debt service could free up to (...)
COVID-19 and debt in the global south: Protecting the most vulnerable in times of crisis I

18 March 2020 - by Daniel Munevar

This is the first part of a blog series covering the impact of COVID-19 on vulnerable countries in the global south. Part 1 analyses the impact of debt burdens on health services. Part 2 discusses the channels different channels of economic transmission of the crisis. Part 3 highlights the (...)
Only a citizen’s audit of SGR debt will unravel public heist of resources

29 February 2020 - by David Calleb Otieno

Early this week, Kenyans woke up to blockbuster like stories of how prices of items and commodities related to the Kenyan Standard Gauge Rail (SGR) project were extremely inflated perhaps explaining why the Kenyan SGR is far much more expensive than the Tanzania SGR. According to the Daily (...)
Colombo declaration on illegitimate debt

27 February 2020 - by CADTM

We, the participants of the 8th CADTM South Asia meeting from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, as well as from Morocco, Belgium and France assembled at Colombo, Sri Lanka from 18-19 February 2020 resolve to fight against illegitimate debt which is a mechanism to transfer wealth created (...)
Out of service: How public services and human rights are being threatened by the growing debt crisis

25 February 2020 - by Iolanda Fresnillo, Eurodad

Public services play a critical role in advancing human rights and fighting inequality. However, growing levels of external public debt, especially in the global south, threaten the very services on which citizens depend in order to have even a basic standard of living. External debt levels (...)
Debt Against the People: an ABC

29 January 2020 - by Eric Toussaint

Introduction Over the last ten years Greece has been a prime example of how a country and a people can be deprived of their liberty through clearly illegitimate debt. Since the 19th century, from Latin America to China, Haiti, Greece, Tunisia, Egypt and the Ottoman Empire public debt has been (...)
Poor countries cut public spending, debt payments trebled

17 January 2020 - by Jubilee Debt Campaign

Figures calculated by Jubilee Debt Campaign from IMF and World Bank data show that growing debt burdens are contributing to public spending cuts. For the 15 countries spending over 18% of revenue on debt payments, 14 saw public spending cuts between 2015 and 2019. Average external government (...)
“Any Third World government which takes the decision to carry on refunding the external debt is opting for the road to ruin”

13 January 2020 - by Eric Toussaint, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva

“Any Third World government which takes the decision to carry on refunding the external debt is opting for the road to ruin.” These were the words in 1991 of Luis Inacio “Lula” da Silva, at that time, president of the Brazilian PT, (Partido dos Trabalhadores – Workers’ party). Interview by Eric (...)
New debt crisis in the South

18 December 2019 - by Milan Rivié

Public external debt in countries of the South [1] is a source of concern, notably because of its dramatic increase within the last two decades and because of parallels with the pre-crisis debt situation of Third World countries in the 1980s. Beyond the similarities, the widespread use of bond (...)
Southern Africa losing US$30 billion annually in trade-related illicit outflows, external government debt payments

2 September 2019 - by Sunit Bagree, ACTSA

According to a new report, The Money Drain: How Trade Misinvoicing and Unjust Debt Undermine Economic and Social Rights in Southern Africa, launched today by ACTSA on the eve of the SADC Summit in Dar es Salaam, rich countries may be accused of neo-colonialism if they fail to assist SADC (...)
Philippines: The Marcos debt

5 November 2018 - by Eduardo C. Tadem

Another compelling argument against the “hero’s burial” for Ferdinand Marcos was his corruption-ridden mismanagement of the country’s debt. At the height of martial law in 1977, he issued Presidential Decree 1177 mandating the automatic appropriation for debt service, thus starting the process that (...)
Summary of The Debt System A History of Sovereign Debts and their Repudiation

10 October 2018 - by Víctor Manuel Isidro Luna

The book The Debt System. A History of Sovereign Debts and their Repudiation will be published later in 2018 by Haymarket in Chicago https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1234-the-debt-system . The original French edition has been published in novembre 2017 in Paris (...)
A critical look at China’s One Belt, One Road initiative

10 October 2018 - by Martin Hart-Landsberg

China’s growth rate remains impressive, even if on the decline. The country’s continuing economic gains owe much to the Chinese state’s (1) still considerable ability to direct the activity of critical economic enterprises and sectors such as finance, (2) commitment to policies of economic (...)
Proposed Solutions by the Dialogue Reference Group on Ballooning Kenyan Debts are False and Flawed

25 September 2018 - by David Calleb Otieno

The Kenyan Peasants League (KPL), a member of La Via Campesina and part of the Kenyan Social Movements for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debts has been following closely the just concluded Dialogue Reference Group meeting that brought together a section of religious leaders and Kenyan civil (...)
Submission to the Independent Expert on foreign debt and human rights By Civil society organizations in Sri Lanka

12 September 2018 - by Collective

This submission to the Independent Expert on Foreign Debt and Human Rights comes at an important juncture in the trajectory of Sri Lanka’s socio-political and economic development. In 2015 the country took a definitive turn after the presidential election, which had led to the election of a new (...)
China to take over Zambian international Airport for debt repayment default; neocolonialism?

11 September 2018 - by Richard Krah

Signing a contract with China is like, ascribing to the boiling frog effect; a fable describing a frog being boiled alive slowly. If you drop a frog suddenly into boiling water, it will jump out, but if you put that same frog in a vessel of water and start heating the water gradually, it will (...)