Debt Justice

The Debt Justice Movement goes back to the 1970s, when people around the world protested the impact of the IMF’s policies on their countries, including in Argentina, Egypt, Costa Rica and South Africa. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s the international movement calling for debt cancellation continued to grow. In the late 1990s the Jubilee 2000 petition collected over 24 million signatures. A debt jubilee is when a country or large organization cancels debt and clears it from the public record. Today, the movement continues to push for debt justice initiatives, including: 

• A UN based debt resolution mechanism: an independent, international, legally-binding mechanism for negotiating debt write downs of illegitimate and unaffordable debt.
• Debt audits: both government audits and independent citizens’ audits to examine the terms and conditions, purpose, actual use and impacts of these loans.
• The establishment of an international taskforce on tackling historic illegitimate debt.
• Cancel debts that are illegitimate or odious.
• End policies that build up more loans. In particular, use grants, not loans, for managing the cost of climate change.