2022 G7 Summit --
Cancel the Debt in the face of the health, economic and climate crises!

This year’s G7 Summit is again approaching in a world that has seen little progressive change over many decades but has instead fallen deeper into debt bondage, inequality and impoverishment under the neoliberal system led and maintained by the richest countries. Bearing the heaviest yoke of debt burdens under this system are the billions of people in the global South whose survival and human rights have  been the most threatened in the last two years of the COVID-19 pandemic.  They remain in the grip of the multiple crises of health, economic recession and intensifying climate change which worsens even more under the weight of debt accumulation and servicing for unsustainable and illegitimate debts, as well as fiscal consolidation under IMF loans that are worsening inequality, particularly among women, minorities, refugees and marginalized groups.

The G7, with the support of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and private lenders, have persisted in pushing their debt “relief” measures – with dire consequences – and now promise “enhancements” in the face of failure. Many countries of the South that entered the pandemic with already high levels of debt are deeper in debt than before as a consequence of both fiscal stimulus response measures to the pandemic as well as a low interest rate global context that fueled excessive lending and borrowing. As we had warned, the inadequate, piecemeal, temporary and debt-creating responses of the G7/G20 solutions have missed the mark and only made conditions worse. They have shown, once more, inadequacy in enforcing the participation of private lenders, to which South countries have become heavily exposed. They have proven once again to be false solutions that are only eroding more livelihoods, deepening inequality, exacerbating the climate crisis, and threatening more lives particularly in the wake of the current food and fuel price inflation shock.  

With stronger voices and an ever-growing reach, we reiterate our demands for debt justice:

* for immediate debt cancelation to help enable people to deal with the multiple crises; to that end the G7 countries should enact national laws that make it mandatory for private creditors to participate in debt relief;
* for an end to the exploitation of peoples and destruction of the environment through lending;
* for the immediate delivery of new, additional and non-debt creating climate finance for adaptation, mitigation and loss and damage, far beyond the unmet $100 billion/year pledge, that adequately meets the needs of the Global South;
* for stopping over-reliance on borrowings by supporting structural transformation across the South toward economic diversification and policy autonomy; and,
* for systemic changes in financial and economic systems to stop the accumulation of unsustainable and illegitimate debt and build more equitable, just and post-carbon societies.


See the full statement in English here: https://bit.ly/English2022G7Summit,
en français: https://bit.ly/français2022G7Summit, auf Deutsch: https://bit.ly/Deutsch2022G7Summit, بالعربية  https://bit.ly/3QvGQkd for Arabic.