Making Poverty History: A Human Rights Law Approach to External Debt

The global debt crisis continues despite a number of efforts over the years to resolve it, and the purpose of this article is to assist in the campaign for debt relief by using international human rights law as basis for granting debt relief to debtor countries. The article begins with a brief account of international customs involving debt cancellation or ‘write-offs’ and examines whether such customs have evolved into general practice. It will then catalogue a number of international conventions pertaining to human rights. It continues by highlighting the adverse effects of the debt burden on the human rights of the people of debtor countries. Finally, the article will conclude that international human rights law presents a compelling argument for canceling sovereign debt. The article will not attempt to provide a precise mathematical equation for solving the debt crisis. Rather, it hopes to supply debtor and creditor nations with a human rights law perspective to arrive at consensual formulas for erasing, or at least reducing, the debt burden.