This book exposes intolerable global double standards in the treatment of debtors and argues that fairness, economic efficiency and principles common to all civilized legal systems, must and can be applied to so-called `developing countries', or Southern sovereign debtors.

Tracing the history of Southern sovereign debts, describing the critical role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in enforcing improvements, and discussing technical debt issues, this book presents a solution incorporating the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) as an appropriate form of debtor protection. Although most multilateral claims are statutorily subordinated to development needs, multilateral institutions wrongly claim preferred creditor status. They routinely violate their own statutes. Kunibert Raffer discusses grants and loans as alternative ways to finance the MDGs and development and necessary caveats on widely used debt statistics and indicators are made. The effects of the present US crisis are also discussed, making solving the never-ending debt problem particularly urgent.



With innovative and never-before discussed topics, this book will appeal to NGO employees, academics and students in development or international relations and political studies. Overseas development institutions and development co-operation ministries and departments will also find this a very useful reference tool.