Heidi Chow is executive director at the Jubilee Debt Campaign.
Pakistan is facing a twin crisis: climate-change-fueled floods that have displaced tens of millions and a crushing debt burden imposed by Western financial institutions. Pakistan’s debt should be canceled immediately.
Ukraine owes billions of dollars in foreign debt, most of it to international finance institutions, banks, and hedge funds. If Western governments were serious about helping Ukrainians amid a devastating war, they would push for those debts to be canceled.
Thomas Sankara, the socialist president of Burkina Faso, was assassinated 34 years ago today. With Global South debt levels at an all-time high, Sankara’s call for resistance to debt as a tool of neocolonial domination has never been more relevant.
It appears that an effective COVID-19 vaccine may be on the horizon. But the profit-making of Big Pharma is threatening what should be a basic principle: that the vaccine is universally available, not just in rich countries but across the Global South.
In the UK and across the world Big Pharma is ripping off public health systems and denying patients vital medicines. This week, Labour showed there is an alternative.