58th session of the Human Rights Council
Item 3: Interactive dialogue with the Independent Expert on foreign debt
Statement by Akãhatã
Monday 10 March 2025
Thank you, President.
Akãhatã makes this statement on behalf of the Sexual Rights Initiative.
We welcome the Independent Expert’s report. As it remarks, Global South countries are most affected by a climate crisis they did not cause and by an inequitable global financial system. They are struggling with increasing debt levels, forced to borrow more money, often just to repay existing debts, with IMF- and World Bank-imposed austerity measures, including cuts to public spending and privatization of essential services affecting disproportionately women, children, elderly, racialized and marginalized communities.
The urgent issues mentioned by the report, such as disparities of power and finance across the word, debt crises in developing nations, the intersection between debt, tax injustice and illicit financial flows, inefficacy of climate funds, lack of accountability, and the vicious cycle of debt accumulation, have been denounced for years. Instead of reducing, they are exponentially increasing.
Additionally, nowadays, neoliberal capitalist, far-right and climate change denier governments set a political and ideological framework leading us to an irreversible climate, economic and human rights catastrophe.
Radical and transformative actions in the areas of climate, economic and feminist justice are long overdue. If this Council, other multilateral systems and member states, mainly in the Global North, continue ignoring this reality, evading accountability and delaying urgent, meaningful and comprehensive actions, any attempt to resolve this situation will be nothing more than a hypocritical simulation.
Thank you.