Probe International

(April 1, 2007) The problem of odious debt typically arises when a despotic regime has incurred substantial sovereign debt and is then succeeded by a less-despotic, possibly democratic, regime that seeks to repudiate that debt. There is no agreed-upon method for dealing with attempts to repudiate odious debt.

(March 29, 2007) A petition signed by international luminaries such as Nobel Prize winner Desmond Tutu, the renowned American academic Noam Chomsky and former French Ambassador Stephane Hessel, among others, is calling on the Group of Eight (G8) creditor nations to place the issue of odious and illegitimate debt on the political agenda at this year’s G8 summit.

(March 24, 2007) The British government has announced it is dedicating a police unit to investigate cases of alleged bribes involving foreign bribery by U.K. businesses and nationals, including allegations that a number of U.K.-based companies paid bribes to Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq as part of the United Nations’ discredited oil-for-food program.

(March 23, 2007) The Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative is the largest multilateral effort aimed at providing debt relief. In this essay, we address the question of whether this program is consistent with a view of justice commonly known as liberal egalitarianism. We argue that the HIPC initiative violates two basic liberal egalitarian principles.

(March 23, 2007) Since the late 1970s, an increasingly global coalition of churches and nongovernmental organizations has pressed for reduction if not outright cancellation of the foreign debt of highly indebted poor countries, because of its deleterious impact on poor people.

(March 23, 2007) The Argentine debt crisis of 2001–2002 and its aftermath are examined in the light of the moral framework of Catholic social teaching on the debt problems of poor countries.

(March 23, 2007) Present arrangements governing the accumulation and discharge of debt by states are difficult to justify fully on the basis of underlying normative considerations. States are different from individuals in important respects, and the deontological justifications that explain why individuals have a strong burden to abide by promises to repay do not straightforwardly apply to countries.