As many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) grapple with a sharp rise in payments on their sovereign debt in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, leaders across the world are calling for urgent debt restructuring and reforms to the development financing system. Their calls are often framed in humanitarian and ethical terms.
An August 2023 UN report described the global debt crisis as a product of “inequalities in the international financial architecture” and argued that the provision of debt relief from high-income countries is an essential step toward creating a more just world economy. Two months later, U.S. Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for International Finance Brent Neiman cited the example of…
