Emma Luce Scali (Birmingham City University)

Sovereign Debt and Socio-Economic Rights Beyond Crisis

Discussant Livia Hinz

Abstract. Sovereign financing – or the financing of the public sector – is central to the realisation of human rights. However, since the 1970s, it has evolved globally into a predominantly debt- and market-based practice: states, including nowadays many advanced economies, increasingly rely on debt, global financial markets, and international institutions to fund their sovereign functions. This trend has been worryingly intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic and the recent global macroeconomic shocks triggered by the war in Ukraine, and it ultimately points to a form of ‘public poverty’ linked, among other things, to the growing privatisation of global wealth and the increasing pressures that governments across the world face to step in and level off – often by recourse to public resources – the structural imbalances and recurring manifold crises of financialised global capitalism. Drawing on her recent book (Sovereign Debt and Socio-Economic Rights Beyond Crisis: The Neoliberalisation of International Law), Emma Luce Scali will offer a critical discussion of the relationship between sovereign debt and socio-economic rights under international law. The book retraces the main post-Eurozone crisis developments in relevant international and EU law, arguing, among other things, that the ‘neoliberalisation’ of international law has been advanced in the wake of the crisis. The seminar will also reflect on more recent trends, and more generally on the structural character and the implications of escalating indebtedness for the ability of states to realise human rights.

at Campus Luigi Einaudi