Sovereign Debt and Human Rights
- At 16 November, 2018
- By admin
- In Articles
HUMAN RIGHT, SOVEREIGN DEBT AND WHY STATES SHOULD NOT KEEP THEIR PROMISES
[Derechos Humanos, Deuda Soberana y Por Qué Los Estados No Deberían Cumplir Siempre sus Promesas]
Anahí Wiedenbrüg
London School of Economics and Political Science
65 Aldwych, London, WC2B E4J, United Kingdom
a.e.wiedenbrug@lse.ac.uk
ABSTRACT
When should binding debt contracts not be repaid? This article argues that whenever the repayment of sovereign debt threatens the human rights of the citizenry, this provides a weighty normative reason to prioritize the fulfilment of the latter over the former. Since there are specific, non-coincidental reasons to fear that a high indebtedness of states may result in the undermining of the socio-economic and the collective human rights of a state’s citizenry, the more specific thesis defended in this article is the following: whenever debt repayment undermines the socio-economic and collective human rights of the state´s citizenry, states have a normatively weighty reason to prioritize the fulfilment of the citizen’s human rights over meeting their contractual debt payment obligations vis-à-vis their creditors.
Keywords: Sovereign Debt, Debt Repayment, Human Rights, Global Justice, Critiques of Capitalism.
