Cancel the Debt march in Manila, Philippines. Photo: APMDD via X
This week, movements across the world are uniting for the Global Week of Action for Debt Justice. Their shared call reflects a growing global demand: to end the unjust systems of debt that fuel inequality and climate breakdown, and to build an economy that centers human rights and dignity.
By: Maria Ron Balsera, CESR’s Executive Director & Auska Ovando, CESR’s Communications Manager
When a government must choose between paying creditors or keeping hospitals and schools open, debt stops being a financial issue: it becomes a human rights one. Around the world, public budgets are being drained by debt repayments while schools, clinics, and climate programs go underfunded. These are not fiscal technicalities, but deliberate political choices that privilege creditors’ profits over people’s rights.
That is why, from Ghana to the Philippines, Argentina to Zimbabwe, communities are rising together during the Global Week of Action for Debt Justice. The week’s activities (from coordinated protests and teach-ins to online actions) are part of a broad movement to transform how the global financial system works. At its heart is a shared vision: that debt should serve development, not domination; that countries should have the resources to fulfill rights and invest in a just, green future.
Reclaiming debt justice through collective action
Debt has long been framed as a technical matter best left to economists and creditors. Yet its consequences are painfully tangible: rising hunger, collapsing healthcare systems, and delayed climate adaptation. Recognizing debt as a human rights issue changes the terms of the debate. It shifts focus from balance sheets to lives, and from austerity to accountability.
Through tools like CESR’s Decoding Debt Injustice, activists and researchers are equipping themselves to make that shift. The approach offers three interlinked steps:
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Interrogate who benefits from debt dependency and who bears the costs — often through privatization, austerity, and regressive taxation.
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Illuminate how debt undermines the rights to health, education, housing, and social protection, using evidence-based tools like CESR’s OPERA Framework.
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Inspire action by transforming that evidence into advocacy and solidarity, from national policy campaigns to global reform movements.
These methods are being adapted in powerful ways across the world. Local groups are conducting “people’s debt audits” to expose how loans and conditionalities restrict public investment. Feminist and youth movements are building coalitions that link economic and climate justice, demanding that debt cancellation be part of a just transition. And communities are telling their own stories: not of victimhood, but of resistance and creativity in the face of unjust systems.
From resistance to reform
Debt justice also means structural reform. Current global debt governance remains dominated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and private creditors. Decisions about repayment and restructuring are made in spaces where debtor nations (and the communities most affected) have little say.
A rights-based approach demands that debt governance be democratized and accountable. CESR explores how this can be achieved in its chapter Rethinking Global Debt Restructuring: A Rights-Based Approach for a Just Financial Architecture, published in the book Transforming Global Economic Governance: Civil Society Perspectives. The chapter outlines how international debt processes could be redesigned around equality, participation, and accountability, principles already embedded in human rights law but absent from most financial decision-making.
Among the key reforms it calls for are:
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A rights-based approach demands that debt governance be democratized and accountable. CESR and partners around the world are calling for reforms that bring this vision to life:
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Align debt processes with international human rights obligations, ensuring that restructuring upholds equality and non-discrimination.
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Require human rights impact assessments before any restructuring deal is finalized, so governments can weigh social costs against fiscal measures.
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Guarantee meaningful participation of affected communities and civil society in debt decisions.
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Regulate private creditors and make all loan contracts and negotiation terms public.
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Establish a fair, UN-led debt workout mechanism to replace creditor-controlled arrangements.
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Ensure debt relief mechanisms include automatic suspension clauses when countries face climate or health crises, allowing them to redirect funds toward urgent public needs.
These reforms echo the spirit of the Global Week of Action’s demands for debt cancellation, transparency, and a just transition that repairs historical harm rather than repeating it.They also advance the vision of a Rights-Based Economy, one in which fiscal and financial systems are designed to fulfill human rights, redistribute power and resources, and ensure that public budgets serve people and planet rather than private profit.
Hope beyond austerity
The debt crisis and the climate crisis are deeply intertwined. Many countries in the Global South are forced to take on new loans to rebuild after floods, heatwaves, and droughts, events caused largely by emissions from the Global North. These same nations are then told to implement austerity measures that cut public services and undermine resilience. This double injustice must end.
But there is hope. The growing global movement for debt justice is showing what solidarity can look like: coordinated mobilizations across continents, united under one message of fairness and repair. In cities and rural communities alike, people are envisioning economies that serve life, not the market; economies where public resources are used to guarantee rights and safeguard the planet.
The Global Week of Action for Debt Justice is more than a moment of resistance. It is a step toward a new narrative: one that connects debt cancellation to the fight for climate justice, gender equality, and economic democracy. It reminds us that the future is not prewritten by creditors, it can be rewritten by collective action.
Debt justice is not charity. It is a legal and moral obligation grounded in human rights. By standing together (across movements, sectors, and borders) we can turn repayment into repair and build a global economy that delivers what it should have all along: dignity, equity, and justice for all.