Some big debts are coming due. On paper, countries of the Global South owe trillions of US dollars to Northern governments, banks and financial institutions.
But a growing movement, led by Southern activists, is turning this story on its head. The majority of these debts are illegitimate, often taken out by past dictatorships and featuring eye-watering interest rates that make them impossible to ever repay. But more than this, campaigners are pointing out that the real – and far greater – debt is owed by the North to the South, for hundreds of years of colonialism, enslavement, and the impacts of the climate crisis.
