In a valuable step forward to support human rights compliant economic policy-making, the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) called on 21 March for governments and intergovernmental organisations to make use of new UN guidance when developing economic reforms.

As a result of protracted conflict and devastating recurring droughts, Somalia is one of Sub-Saharan Africa’s most troubled and underdeveloped countries.

At the start of the New Year, the number of countries at high risk of debt distress is growing at an alarming rate. With so many crises already ongoing, and more expected to emerge over the next 12 months, it’s no surprise that the topic is high on the agenda of international organisations. But perhaps it’s not as high up as it should be in order to head off a looming crisis…

First in a two-part blog series 

This toolkit aims to support civil society in their advocacy towards the World Bank Group (WBG).

This article was initially published in Eurodad member SLUG's newsletter

Ten years ago, on 15 September 2008, the US investment bank Lehman Brothers collapsed. This collapse is largely seen as a key event of the North Atlantic financial crisis, which also had spillover effects on the rest of the world. Around the globe, this decade-long crisis has caused massive unemployment, as well as rising poverty and inequality. It has been used and abused to slash people’s rights – in particular the rights of workers – while the financial sector that caused the crisis has benefited from huge publicly funded bailouts. Ten years after the last crisis began, global debt levels are higher than before, and debt vulnerabilities are increasingly hard to manage. That’s why activists all over the world are standing up to call for fundamental reforms of the financial sector on 15 September 2018.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a key part of the international financial architecture and wields huge influence over the domestic economic policies of impoverished countries

This report analyses the problems that monetary policies in developed economies pose for developing countries. Given the history of debt crises in emerging economies, with profound and long-lasting socio-economic and political consequences, we must be alert to signs of another emerging debt crisis.

Mozambique should not pay the hidden debt by Joseph Hanlon