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G7 campaign: Global Justice needs #CancelTheDebt!
The pandemic has exacerbated the debt situation in the Global South: 135 out of 148 countries are critically indebted. More than three times as many countries as before the pandemic are already in debt crisis or directly threatened by debt distress. While there are insolvency procedures for individuals and companies, there is no…
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Out now: Global Sovereign Debt Monitor 2022
In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the global debt situation has deteriorated. Countries in all regions of the world will emerge from the pandemic with unsustainable debt levels. While it was possible to avoid a massive sovereign default wave in 2021, in many cases, this was only possible through…
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New Focus Paper: Vulnerability as a basis for debt relief
In the current handling of sovereign debt crises, creditors separate countries into needy and non-needy according to their income levels. This has led to questionable results in the past. On the initiative of countries that were excluded from debt relief despite a high risk of over-indebtedness, the United Nations has…
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WORLD BANK: COMMON FRAMEWORK INSUFFICIENT
After the IMF Director Kristalina Georgieva had already pointed out the inadequacies of the Common Framework of the G20 for the restructuring of sovereign debt in clear words in December, the World Bank is now following suit. In the Global Economic Prospects published on 11 January, the authors dedicate a…
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New analysis: No more loans? How creditors torpedo debt relief initiatives
The debt relief initiatives established in the context of the COVID-19 crisis threaten to fail because poorer countries are reluctant to participate. One reason for this is the claim made primarily by private creditors that the beneficiaries of debt relief exclude themselves long-term from the capital market. However, more important…
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New Analysis: The Tunisian debt crisis in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic: Debt repayments over human rights?
At the beginning of the pandemic in spring 2020, it was not so much the health crisis, which hit developing countries like Tunisia hard. While Europe and the US struggled with the health impact of the pandemic, it was the global economic impact, which devastated the Tunisian economy. In April…
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New Focus Paper: Debt Sustainability in Times of Climate Disaster and Corona
In recent years, the effects of the climate crisis, exacerbated since March 2020 by the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, have graphically highlighted what it means for heavily-indebted countries to be hit by external shocks. While the international debt architecture has responded, nevertheless, little has changed in terms of its…
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New Focus Paper: Participation of Multilateral Development Banks in Debt Relief
Since April 2020, the members of the G20 and the Paris Club have granted up to 73 of the poorest countries a debt moratorium aimed at creating fiscal scope to facilitate combating the COVID-19 pandemic. Since November 2020, a debate has been ongoing over whether to grant real debt relief…
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Out now: Global Sovereign Debt Monitor 2021
The coronavirus pandemic has further exacerbated the debt crisis in the Global South. Countries with low to middle incomes, whose economies were already unstable, are the most affected of all by the effects of recession, and their debt servicing ability has been substantially weakened. Download the full report here. At…
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New educational material on sovereign debt and climate change
As part of our 2020 campaign "Climate justice needs debt relief", erlassjahr.de produced four new educational activities on the complex topic of sovereign debt and climate change, targeted at pupils in secondary education (age 16 to 19). The activities complement the brochure "Debt crises affect people" (activities 1-12), published in…
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