The Third World's Odious Debt
| The South makes compelling moral arguments to cancel its foreign debts. But, it also has an indisputable legal case because the overwhelming majority of those debts are odious in law.
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"If a despotic power incurs a debt not for the needs or in the interest of the State, but to strengthen its despotic regime, to repress the population that fights against it, etc., this debt is odious for the population of all the State."
- Alexander Sack, 1927
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In 1927, Alexander Sack the world's pre-eminent legal scholar on public debts, defined the Doctrine of Odious Debts, which remains the ultimate legal source on that subject. The Doctrine of Odious Debts, though now 70 years old, helps bring clarity to today's complicated Third World debt situation, and fairness to a tragedy in which innocent Southern citizens pay, and corrupt and negligent borrowers and lenders get away scot-free.
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About Us
Welcome to Probe International's Odious Debts Web site: The Internet source for information about the global odious debt movement. We provide:
An e-library of legal information about the principle of odious debt
A forum for citizens and advocacy groups throughout the world to post details of their country's odious debts and describe the efforts made to establish the illegal nature of these debts
An archive of information relevant to legal challenges to Third World debt
The site facilitator, Probe International has been the world's leading authority on odious debts since 1991, when its publication, Odious Debts: Loose Lending, Corruption, and the Third World's Environmental Legacy introduced the concept to the Third World debt debate.
The Doctrine of Odious Debts is not the only legal tool available to challenge Third World debts - many legal challenges to foreign debts have been and are being tried. But the term so aptly describes the nature of these debts that we have adopted it for this Web site's signature.
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