(March 26, 2008) World bank system to safeguard oil revenues hasn’t exactly worked as expected.
Why Aren’t We Developing Faster?
(March 4, 2008) According to Paul Wolfowitz, former President of the World Bank: World Bank’s beneficiary countries that do not have access to capital markets mostly “remain poor because their political system is unstable, private property rights are very limited, the judicial system is weak or subservient, or the Government is corrupt” and assistance to such countries “at best provides relief [and] at worst supports corruption or programs that waste scarce local and external resources”.
NGOs’ letter to Ban Ki-Moon about odious debts
(February 29, 2008) A letter from NGOs to Ban Ki-Moon regarding external debt.
Challenging apartheid’s foreign deb
(February 1, 2008) South Africa’s widely commended Truth & Reconciliation Commission has a blind spot. Surprisingly, no attention appears to have been given to the foreign corporations, individual investors and Western governments that helped create and sustain the racial dictatorship which came to be known as apartheid.
“World Bank disgrace”: Wall Street Journal
(January 16, 2008) A review of World Bank loans to India’s health sector by the Bank’s own internal watchdog, indicates fraud and corruption put lives at risk, enriching contractors in the process. Worse still, says WSJ, the bank repeatedly looked the other way.
Clearly Odious
(January 16, 2008) Reporting on Indonesia’s ex-president Suharto’s death watch, Canada’s National Post writer, Peter Goodspeed, paints a clear picture of how the people of Indonesia became saddled with a legacy of odious debts.
Scholars chart new legal course
(January 16, 2008) The principles of the odious debt doctrine exploded into the modern debt debate following the U.S. led invasion of Iraq, capturing the attention of legal scholars and exciting new thought on the history, the foundation, and the future application of the doctrine.
Folsom quits
(January 16, 2008) The World Bank’s chief anti-corruption investigator calls it a day: pressure to leave over allegations her appointment due to Republican party connections.
From odious debt to odious finance: Avoiding the externalities of a functional odious debt doctrine
(January 1, 2008) This Article looks at the generally agreed upon characteristics of the odious debt doctrine and considers the unintended consequences and externalities that would ensue if this doctrine were ever made regularly operative. The enlivened scholarly debate surrounding the odious debt doctrine assumes that debt is the sole finance vehicle for despotic governments. This is simply not the case.
Sovereign debt and social rights – legal reflections on a difficult relationship
(January 1, 2008) The relationship between the sovereign debt of developing countries and the protection of social rights in those countries has received a lot of attention from an economic, political and moral perspective, but relatively little has been written about the legal side of this relationship.
A Convenient Untruth: Fact and Fantasy in the Doctrine of Odious Debts
(January 1, 2008) The previous regime [in Iraq] accumulated a heavy burden of foreign debts to states which financed the tyrant’s wars against his people first, and then against our neighbors. The foreign loans helped him build a huge military apparatus and manufacture weapons of mass destruction, including chemical weapons which he used against the Iraqi people in Halabja. The loans supported his system of oppression and paid for his palaces and prisons during the war against Iran when Iraq’s oil revenue was extremely low.
REVIEW Iraq’s debt relief: Procedure and potential implications for international debt relief
(December 28, 2007) Martin Weiss, an analyst with the Congressional Research Service, the public policy research arm of the U.S. Congress, has published an updated paper about the treatment of Iraq’s debts by creditor nations following the fall of Saddam Hussein.
German Jubilee movement slams World Bank odious debts paper as “biased” and “misleading”
(December 28, 2007) The popular German grassroots Jubilee movement Erlassjahr has dismissed the World Bank paper on odious debts as biased and flawed.
Support grows for landmark debt cancellation bill
(December 28, 2007) The Jubilee Act for Responsible Lending and Expanded Debt Cancellation currently under consideration by the U.S. Congress, has gained support both in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. The debt-relief legislation seeks to dissolve the debts of 67 of the world’s poorest countries owed to the United States, other official creditors in the Paris Club, the IMF, World Bank and other international financial institutions.
China’s environmental regulator may require listed firms to disclose environmental information
(December 24, 2007) The State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) wants listed companies to disclose environmental information, the official China Daily reported. The newspaper cited Ge Chazhong, an official with SEPA, as saying that the agency is drafting rules for compulsory disclosure, which could be finalized in the next six months. The new reporting system could include key emission indexes for sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide and company targets to increase energy efficiency and reduce emissions.
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