English
Introduction
“It is worse than you think… We need an absolute pivot, because this is not business as usual…There has tended to be an optimism bias [referring to public debt projections that will most probably not happen and instead debt would be much higher]”
IMF Deputy Chief Gita Gopinath
“3.3 billion people in the world live in countries that are spending more on servicing the debt than on education or health… So, growth and development cannot happen”
UNCTAD Secretary-General Rebecca Grynspan
“Right now, we’re in the biggest global debt crisis in thirty years”
Jubilee Debt Cancellation campaign
Indeed, these are unprecedented times, and public debt levels cannot be addressed “business as usual.” A systemic change is necessary to change public debt conditions and impact on human rights and to achieve social and economic justice.
This manual aims to inform civil society organisations and their stakeholders in the Arab region about public debt and its relation to and repercussions on economic and social rights as well as sustainable development in order to advocate for change towards rights fulfilment and debt justice. It focuses on the relation of public debt with human rights that encompasses human, and socio-economic development and environmental sustainability. The manual serves as a primer, starting with an introduction to concepts and presenting the public debt structure, its determinants, and relevant indicators. It also outlines the mainstream debt sustainability frameworks and alternative approaches that consider public debt from a rights-based perspective. It concludes with suggestions to initiate action towards the integration of human rights into all aspects of public debt. The manual employs the terms Global South and developing countries interchangeably to refer to the same group of nations.
The focus is on Arab region and the manual includes examples and a brief debt profile of six highly indebted middle-income Arab countries: Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, and Tunisia. Most of these have borrowed from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and continue to face public debt challenges.