'This paper explains and critically assesses some of the recent official policy announcements with regards to vulture funds, and asks how robust they are. The paper also highlights the worrying increase in recent cases of vulture fund action, in particular against some of the world’s poorest countries. The concern voiced by NGOs and governments alike is that the small gains in debt cancellation could be instantly wiped-out by aggressive vulture fund litigation. This, adds the paper has cause more...

'Considering various economic criteria, Official Development Assistance (ODA) trend, Millenium Development Goals (MDG) progress and country’s socio-political scenario, this paper argues that Bangladesh has the right to more ODA.

The authors argue for debt cancellation and more ODA for Bangladesh, based on the rationale of the country’s huge economic loss due to climate change. Bangladesh's debt to foreign loans is growing. Total debt service liability has already crossed the country’s a more...

'This study was produced by the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) and represents one of the activities completed under its programme of work for the biennium 2004-2005. The study has been carried out under the umbrella of the Monterrey Consensus, an outcome of the International Conference on Financing for Development (Monterrey, Mexico, 18-22 March 2002), bearing in mind the responsibility assigned to ESCWA to monitor progress made by its 13 members in improving regional ac more...

In the new millennium, the Western aid effort towards Africa has surged due to writings by well-known economists, a celebrity mass advocacy campaign, and decisions by Western leaders to make Africa a major foreign policy priority. This survey contrasts the predominant 'transformational' approach
(West saves Africa) to occasional swings to a 'marginal' approach (West takes one small step at a time to help individual Africans). Evaluation of 'one step at a time' initiatives is generally easier th more...

This report is the last in a series from the Jubilee research programme – one of the official successors to the Jubilee 2000 debt campaign – at nef (the new economics foundation) designed to stimulate progress towards a comprehensive and fair treatment of the crisis of sovereign debt of some of the world’s poorest nations. With concern growing about the stability of the global financial system, and the end of an unprecedented period of low interest rates now in sight, this is needed more more...

We are pleased to announce the launch of a special IPC website containing National Reports on Economic Policies for Growth, Employment and Poverty Reduction (http://www.undp-povertycentre.org/reports.htm). Many of IPC’s Country Studies are drawn from these reports.

See the release of the latest national report on Zambia and the related IPC Country Study, Does Debt Relief Create Fiscal Space in Zambia? The MDG Implications.

The reconstruction of Iraq is one of the most urgent challenges facing the international community. Over the past two decades the country has been devastated by successive wars and since 1990 sanctions. Ordinary Iraqis have suffered gross violations of human rights, along with one of the most dramatic deteriorations in living standards ever recorded. Now unsustainable debt threatens to undermine reconstruction efforts. This briefing paper argues that the country’s debt is unpayable, but also t more...

Nigeria, one of the poorest countries in the world, is in the process of giving a huge sum of money to the
richest countries. UK organisations which are members of the Jubilee Debt Campaign are urging the UK
government to return its share of this money to Nigeria to fi ght poverty.

Jubilee Debt Campaign’s Debt and...
briefings, produced with different
partners, explore the impact of
debt on real lives. They argue that
‘unpayable’ debts, which a country
cannot afford whilst meeting basic
human needs, and ‘illegitimate’
debts, which arose from unfair or
irresponsible lending, should be
cancelled.

Despite numerous commitments to reform, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are still using their aid to make developing countries implement inappropriate economic policies, with the tacit approval of rich-country governments. These economic policy conditions undermine national policy-making, delay aid flows, and often fail to deliver for poor people. If the world is to make poverty history, this practice must be stopped. Aid must be conditional on being spent transparently more...