Jubilee 2025: The new global debt crisis

Many of the world's poorest countries are experiencing a new debt crisis. During this Jubilee Year, Pope Francis has urged for immediate actions to tackle this problem.

Vatican City photo by Gherardo Sava on Unsplash

Developing countries are facing dramatic debt and development crises where debt-distressed countries are having to sacrifice investments in education, healthcare, infrastructure and climate resilience, to meet obligations to their external creditors.

One reason for the debt situation is the international community's failure to address the shortcomings in the global financial system and to empower international financial institutions (IFIs) to implement more robust measures to prevent and resolve these recurring debt and development crises.

The Jubilee Report: A Blueprint for Tackling the Debt and Development Crises and Creating the Financial Foundations for a Sustainable People-Centered Global Economy.

Interview on SAfm

Malango Mughogho was invited, along with Professor Grieve Chelwa, to discuss the report in an interview with Cathy Mohlahlana for The Talking Point on SAfm, on 26 June.

Here are extracts of some of Malango's statements from the discussion:

Borrowing money is something that we all understand.

It's been a feature of human societies for centuries, and that applies to countries as well, which borrow for many different reasons, including to fight wars, to protect their people, but also importantly, to build vital infrastructure like hospitals and roads. So it's safe to say that borrowing, in and of itself, is not bad, even when countries do it, but the challenge is when things go wrong."

A key challenge is  when there are negative impacts from outside the country on a country's ability to repay its debt.

Examples include the global economic downturn because of the COVID19 pandemic. And, for many Africa countries, climate change.

So for example, if there's been a flood, a country needs to respond to that. There’s often loss of human life, of infrastructure, and so that's a disaster is often declared in the country. Money then needs to be found to address that disaster, which, as I said, in many instances, increasingly, is being made worse by climate change. And when that happens, then countries are forced, often, to increase their debt levels, or they then don't have money to be able to allocate to the general requirements like health and education because they have to repay debt. It’s a complex and unjust situation."

Listen to the full discussion here or via our In The Media page.

Experts come together

In response to this urgent reality of debt, development, and climate crises, a group of leading experts in debt, development, and the global financial system came together at the request of the late Pope Francis to form a Jubilee Commission for the year 2025. A quarter century ago, on the occasion of the last Jubilee, Pope John Paul II advocated for debt relief for the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) to confront the structural roots of debt and underdevelopment in the Global South.

The Commission was convened by the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences (PASS) and Columbia University’s Initiative for Policy Dialogue (IPD)

View a public seminar by SARChI Industrial Development:

Jubilee 2025: Tackling Debt and Underdevelopment in the Global South

Another debt crisis: 25 years on

After 25 years, the world faces a new debt crisis, necessitating significant reforms in the global financial architecture. Pope Francis again called for solutions that will require debt relief but asked for more: reforms of the global financial system.

Published in June 2025, the Jubilee Report provides both an assessment of the current situation and a blueprint for reforming the international financial architecture to enable countries to achieve sustainable debt levels and scale up investment in healthcare, education, clean energy and climate adaptation. It offers practical and principled recommendations to address the current crises and advances a vision for a reimagined international financial architecture.

Read an executive summary of the report:

Executive-Summary-of-Jubilee-Report.pdf

Download PDF • 225KB

The report calls for a re-evaluation of global regulations on finance, taxation, trade, and knowledge dissemination. Its main goal is to foster a global economy that benefits everyone, especially the most vulnerable, ensuring no one is left behind.

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*This post is contains repurposed content from the Boston University Global Policy Center's analysis of the Jubilee Report.

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