All sovereign debt restructurings are inherently messy, expensive, exasperating, time-consuming and contentious. These are the familiar pathologies in the international system to resolve unsustainable sovereign debts. But the period since the onset of the Covid-19 crisis has revealed (to use a...

Sixty per cent of low-income countries are in “debt distress” or at high risk of it. The current sovereign debt restructuring framework leads to unsustainable debts over the long term, a continuing repeat of the crisis/debt restructuring cycle, economic stagnation and poverty in low-income...