Sovereign Debt and Human Rights

Sovereign debt is necessary for the functioning of many modern states, yet its impact on human rights is underexplored in academic literature. Without understanding how debt accumulates, it is impossible to realise the impact it can have on the individual.

Taking the big three sovereign lenders of the international financial institutions, the sovereigns, and the private lenders, Bantekas and Lumina ask what the human rights dimensions of their policies are. How do debt-influencing mechanisms and vulture funds enter the mix? What happens to human rights when sovereign debt accumulates? What happens to people's rights when structural adjustment programmes are imposed on debtor states, in attempts to service their debts?

For the first time Bantekas and Lumina assemble a team of experts, both lawyers and non-lawyers, to arrive at a variety of conclusions: that the imposition of structural adjustment programmes on debtor states, far from solving the complex problem of sovereign debt, in fact exacerbates the debt, damages the state's economic sovereignty, injures the entrenched rights of peoples, and worsens the borrower's economic situation.

Ilias Bantekas, Professor of Law, Brunel University and Northwestern University, Cephas Lumina, University of Fort Hare, Professor of Law

Ilias Bantekas is Professor of International Law and Arbitration at Brunel and Northwestern Universities and a senior fellow at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies of the University of London. He has consulted governments, international organisations, private clients and NGOs in most areas of international law and regularly acts as arbitrator. Key works include: International Human Rights Law and Practice (2nd ed, CUP 2016 with L Oette); International Law (3rd ed, OUP 2017, with E Papastavridis); and Introduction to International Arbitration (CUP 2015).

Cephas Lumina is full Research Professor of Law at the University of Fort Hare, an Extra-Ordinary Professor of Human Rights Law at the Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria, an Advocate of the High Court of Zambia and the former United Nations Independent Expert on the effects of foreign debt and other related international financial obligations of States on the full enjoyment of all human rights, particularly economic, social and cultural rights). His work, particularly the UN Guiding Principles on Foreign Debt and Human Rights, is considered as having changed the political and legal landscape in the area of sovereign debt and human rights. He has consulted for various regional and international organisations, governments and non-governmental organisations on human rights and related issues. He is currently a Member of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child.