Southern-Led CSO Global Meeting on Debt

The current debt context is dominated by a rising trend in its burden on the economies of southern countries, with an ever-growing list of countries defaulting or facing high debt risks with no concrete possibilities of resolution, in a vicious circle that prioritises debt servicing over other urgent needs such as social protection, health, education, and climate.

The asymmetries between North and South, and between creditors and debtors, occur within the framework of a financial architecture that favours the most developed countries and the groups that concentrate the greatest capital power in the world.

The costs of the crisis are unevenly distributed, with the heaviest burden bearing down on the population that is more exposed to economic, social and climate vulnerabilities. The North’s historical ecological debt to the South carries with it responsibilities as well as the political will that has been left out of the debt and crisis recovery agenda. Civil society organisations and social movements that work for justice within the debt architecture across the globe need to articulate joint strategies and actions.

Objectives

• Generate an intra-regional exchange and dialogue that promotes the analysis, position and needs from the perspective of civil society organisations and debt social movements from the Global South.
• Coordination across the challenges, demands and strategies to be carried out by the debt civil society from the Global South, jointly with counterparts in other regions, towards global advocacy.
• Define short- and medium-term priorities and joint actions vis-à-vis regional and global debt-related spaces and opportunities.
• Prepare a joint statement with key messages from all debt organisations participating, useful for participants in national, regional and global spaces.
• Elaborate joint communications material taking advantage of the wide inter-regional participation and voices.

Participants

30-45 civil society organisations and movements from the Global South (Latin America, Africa, Asia, Middle East and the Gulf). 10-15 civil society organisations from the Global North.