On February 20, to mark the World Day of Social Justice, erlassjahr.de/Jubilee Germany joined the climate strike in Düsseldorf mobilized by Fridays for Future. Our colleague Malina Stutz gave a speech about debt and climate justice, and the need for a rights-based international financial order. Here is the translated version in English:
“My name is Malina and I am delighted to be here today on the World Day for Social Justice to speak on behalf of the german debt justice alliance erlassjahr.de.
What do we actually mean when we talk about social justice?
For us, social justice means
- a fair distribution of wealth and income worldwide,
- genuine educational opportunities for all,
- access to healthcare,
- protection from poverty,
- and also: political participation.
All of this should be the minimum! Not pipe dreams, but rights! For many people, especially in the Global South, however, these rights are not a reality.
This is because realising these human rights requires government funding. Countries such as Ghana, Sri Lanka, Senegal and Kenya have to pay a large part of their government revenue to international creditors in the form of interest and loan repayments.
The beneficiaries are mostly private financial institutions in the Global North – BlackRock, Allianz or Deutsche Bank, for example. Other beneficiaries include international public financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and creditor countries such as Germany, France and, in particular, Japan and China.
But when large portions of the national budget flow to international creditors, what is left for education, health and social spending?
What is left for social justice?
And what is left to protect the population from the consequences of the climate crisis, from droughts, floods and cyclones?
Sri Lanka was hit by Cyclone Ditwah in November 2025. The cyclone caused severe devastation and claimed many lives. At the same time, Sri Lanka carries one of the heaviest external debt burdens in the world. And in Sri Lanka, the people have borne the brutal consequences of the unjust international debt system in recent years.
This is because the international debt and financial architecture is dominated by creditors. It is characterized above all by the fact that there are no binding regulations at all. This means that there is simply no rights-based international debt system, but rather a system based solely on “Deals.” Deals that creditors negotiate among themselves.
As a result, countries such as Sri Lanka do not receive urgently needed debt cancellation. Instead, their creditors keep them afloat through debt restructuring and ever new “aid loans”. The goal is clear: to ensure payments to international creditors to the greatest extent possible – whatever the cost.
And in return for these “aid loans”, countries in the Global South are deprived of their economic sovereignty and obliged by their creditors and the International Monetary Fund to implement socially harmful austerity measures. In many countries, the debt crisis hits those who are already disadvantaged particularly hard: women, children and workers. They are the ones who suffer most from social cuts and austerity policies.
The Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, Kristalina Georgieva, visited Sri Lanka just a few days ago. On the occasion of her visit, local comrads published a statement, from which I would like to read a short excerpt:
“The IMF announced its Managing Director’s visit as an opportunity to ‘observe firsthand the impact of Cyclone Ditwah’ and explore how the IMF can ‘support recovery efforts and contribute to building a more resilient future for all Sri Lankans’.
There is a bitter irony here. For 61 years, the IMF’s engagement in Sri Lanka has done precisely the opposite: eroded resilience, dismantled state capacity, and locked the country into a debt-dependent future.”
Our comrads end their statement with the sentence:
“The best sympathy and solidarity Kristalina Georgieva can give the people of Sri Lanka is for the IMF to take its hands off our future.”
As erlassjahr.de, we say clearly: we do not want Deals that cement the relationships of dependency and domination between North and South. We are fighting for a rights-based international debt order that puts human rights before the repayment of interest and loans. We are calling for such a system together with debt justice activists worldwide. And Governments from the Global South are also calling for such a system – the African Union and the Small Island States, for example, are calling for a UN debt framework convention. But Germany and the EU are blocking these demands! But we cannot and will not accept that.
What is needed is global debt justice – NOW!
What is needed is global climate justice – NOW!
What is needed is a fair, global financial system – NOW!
Thank you.“