The odious debt of world crises
Since last decades the world has been suffering different crises, both financial and economic, of course, the financial crisis known as the great depression, an event that led the world to the edge of the collapse, affecting from the least developed countries to countries that presumed to be power. Due to the crisis tour that the world has completed, countries have been forced to resort to financing by international financial entities with the objective of correcting their internal debts, which especially affect the well -being of the population, but toIn turn, they are looking to achieve greater growth. This financing has left countries that they do not have enough resources to settle their debt.
However, on frequent occasions governments acquire debts that are not necessarily for this purpose, such is the case of “the apartheid regime of South Africa contracted debts with private banks and a large part to finance the army and the police or to repress theAfrican majority ”(Kremer & Jayachandra, 2002). For this reason, at the moment when a country acquires a sovereign debt, that is, obtained by its government, this can confirm whether such debt was legitimate. In the event that a sovereign debt was not made with the consent of the population or for the benefit of this, there may be an exception in its payment, this is known as odious debt.
Therefore, according to Kremer and Jayachandra (2002) if those who caused it are aware that it goes against the interests of its inhabitants, this debt should not be transferred to a successor government. The problem is that this does not happen, in many countries its population has to deal with the consequences of this, in addition to being forced to pay it in one way or another. Consequently, one of the suggestions to prevent countries from continuing is to limit credit as in the case of Colombia, which decided to prohibit the grant of credits of the Bank of the Republic to the Government except for some exceptions which in the mid -Years eighty was its greatest source of financing.
There are certain cases where this debt has been achieved to be eliminated, such as “the treaty signed by Spain and the US in December 1898 in Paris where Spain renounces the debt that Cuba owed it, as ancient colony”. However, this does not happen in all cases because many times countries prefer to pay their hate.
In conclusion, the bankruptcies of the states, the waste of money, the eternal wars that consume the resources of the suspicious countries and investments, further increase the debt that countries obtain making their payment difficult. Not being able to abandon these debts many countries decide not to pay a part or all of it, this is where the term arises: hateful debt.
REFERENCES.
- Kremer & Jayachandra, 2002
- Cabrera & González, 2000
- Toussaint, 2012
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