Pfeiffer James
Department of Global Health Hans Rosling Center, University of Washington, 3980 15th Ave NE, Seattle, Seattle, WA, 98105, USA.
Global Health. 2025 Jan 7;21(1):1. doi: 10.1186/s12992-024-01081-5.
The Covid pandemic and its aftermath have triggered new alarm and social unrest across the Global South over the deepening international debt crisis that now threatens to derail Universal Health Coverage (UHC), other Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), future pandemic preparedness, and global warming mitigation. The recent Globalization and Health article by Alex Kentikelenis and Thomas Stubbs (May 2024), "Social protection and the International Monetary Fund: promise versus performance", offers a meticulously quantified rendering of the social costs imposed by the crisis and takes aim at IMF solutions. They advocate for a rejection of IMF austerity programs and offer a valuable prescription for change through the International Labor Organization's "Universal Social Protection" concept.
Similar to the Jubilee movement at the turn of the century, global civil society, humanitarian aid, and health organizations are mobilizing in a variety of global networks to call for debt cancellation and restructuring as well as an end to austerity. These include new debt law campaigns in London and New York to rein in private creditors, calls for new IMF issuance of "Special Drawing Rights", demands for "Global Public Investment", and promotion of Universal Social Protection.
The Universal Social Protection approach described by Kentikelenis and Stubbs provides a focal point for these demands to confront this latest and worst episode of sovereign debt crisis already undermining global health progress.
新冠疫情及其后果在全球南方引发了新的警报和社会动荡，原因是国际债务危机不断加深，这一危机如今有可能破坏全民健康覆盖（UHC）、其他可持续发展目标（SDGs）、未来的疫情防范以及全球变暖缓解工作。亚历克斯·肯蒂凯莱尼斯和托马斯·斯塔布斯在近期发表于《全球化与健康》（2024年5月）的文章《社会保护与国际货币基金组织：承诺与表现》中，对这场危机造成的社会成本进行了精确量化，并将矛头指向了国际货币基金组织的解决方案。他们主张拒绝国际货币基金组织的紧缩计划，并通过国际劳工组织的“全球社会保护”概念提出了一项宝贵的变革方案。
与世纪之交的禧年运动类似，全球民间社会、人道主义援助组织和卫生组织正在各种全球网络中动员起来，呼吁取消债务和进行债务重组，并结束紧缩政策。这些行动包括在伦敦和纽约开展新的债务法运动以控制私人债权人，呼吁国际货币基金组织新发行“特别提款权”，要求进行“全球公共投资”，以及推广全球社会保护。
肯蒂凯莱尼斯和斯塔布斯所描述的全球社会保护方法为应对这场已经在破坏全球卫生进展的最新、最严重的主权债务危机的这些诉求提供了一个焦点。
