The illegitimacy of the debt is based on its historical political and economic origins and context, on the nature of the contractors, processes, terms and purpose of the debt, as well as on its impact on peoples and communities: women, men, children, indigenous, oppressed and marginalized groups and classes on economies and societies, and on the environment.

1. The indebtedness of the South is the result of the exploitation and control of the resources, economies and peoples of the South throughout the history of colonization, neo-colonization and capitalist globalization. The resulting underdevelopment, poverty, lack of financial resources and reliance on imports created the ìneedî for external capital infusion in the form of aid, investments and loans.
2. Northern creditors use debt as an instrument for the continued plunder of the South, actively cultivating the need to borrow and relentlessly pushing loans to governments and private corporations in the South. These creditors are banks, corporations, northern governments, and international financial institutions.
3. In addition to accumulating huge profits through lending, northern creditors use(d) debt and credit as leverage for economic conditionalities on the South with the acquiescence, if not active collaboration of local elites. These economic conditionalities perpetuate the relations of dominance and exploitation and the concentration of wealth and power in the global capitalist system. These economic conditionalities have led to greater impoverishment in the South.
4. Aside from the creditors, the local elites were the beneficiaries of these loans, and not the peoples of the South. Many of these debts lined the pockets of corrupt government officials. Many loans to private corporations and cronies were guaranteed by governments and subsequently paid for with public funds after the loans were pocketed or wasted.
5. Illegitimate parties contracted many debts through illegitimate means, with illegitimate terms, for illegitimate purposes:

• Loans were contracted by corrupt, dictatorial and repressive governments.
• Many debts were incurred with the use of fraud, bribery and coercion.
• The terms of payments were unfair and unjust.
• Many loans were spent on projects and policies harmful to people, communities and the environment, or pocketed by public officials and their cronies.

6. The servicing of these huge debts put an unsupportable burden on South countries, and has a terrible impact on our people, our economies and environment. In many countries in the South, payments on interest alone is the single biggest item in public spending.

7. The debt has actually been paid many times over by the people of the South, in financial and economic terms, in social and environmental terms, and in human terms. 

8. The peoples and countries of the South are creditors of an enormous historical, social and ecological debt of the North. It is the North that owes the South.

For all these reasons, Jubilee South regards the so-called debt of the South as illegitimate. The people of the South do not owe these debts and we should not be made to pay. It is a grave injustice that peoples of the South are being made to pay these debts in the

face of urgent needs for survival, for basic services, for genuine economic development. What is a more fundamental injustice is that peoples of the South are being made to pay debts we do not owe nor have we benefited from, debts that have in fact been used against us in many ways.

The neoliberal global economic system, which is responsible for the debt problem, is destructive and genocidal in its workings and effects. The same institutions and system responsible for the debt problem cannot bring about a lasting solution to it.

That system must be changed and can be changed.

For more information: www.jubileesouth.org