Ninety-Nine is published three times a year by Global Justice Now
Global Justice Now campaigns for a world where resources are controlled by the many, not the few. We champion social movements and propose democratic alternatives to the rule of the 1%. Our activists and groups in towns and cities around the UK work in solidarity with those at the sharp end of poverty and injustice.
Ninety-Nine magazine, Global Justice Now 66 Offley Road, London SW9 0LS 020 7820 4900 • offleyroad@globaljustice.org.uk • globaljustice.org.uk
Editors: Jonathan Stevenson, Anita Bhadani
Graphic Design: Matt Bonner www.revoltdesign.uk
Cover illustration: Edel Rodriguez
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Trump
2.0
– we
can build the resistance
Anita Bhadani Media manager
Trump’s re-election has cast a dark shadow. At the time of writing, he has already authorised economic sanctions on the International Criminal Court, withdrawn the US from the UN Human Rights Council, taken measures to dismantle USAID, proposed the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza, and launched a widespread assault on the basic rights and dignities of communities in the US. While the apparatus of the US state has never been a benevolent one, Trump’s re-election is emblematic of a worrying slide to authoritarianism that threatens democracy on a global scale.
But this time, our movements must rebuild across causes and forge solidarities, ready to take this challenge on. In the US, migrant rights organisers are fighting to dismantle the mass deportation agenda through broadening the base of support from community to community for long term change, as Silky Shah writes on page 18. There is work to be done here in the UK, too. As Nick Dearden writes on page 8, we need to challenge the causes of Trump, which means challenging our own government’s economic policies, premised on the idea that deregulation and growth should triumph over everything else.
Trump’s re-election is part of a worrying slide to authoritarianism that threatens democracy on a global scale.
There are signs of hope. Over in Latin America, countries are fighting a war against corporate courts, with Honduras standing strong against the intimidation of US company Prospera’s eye-watering $10.8 billion lawsuit, as ex-Ecuadorian minister Guillaume Long writes on page 10. Their bravery must invigorate our fight to dismantle corporate courts – if Trump’s attempts to bully countries into submission through trade are anything to go by, we will need to use every tool in our arsenal to fight back.
The global crises our world faces today did not start with Trump, and they won’t end at his term’s close. Our movements need to grapple with resisting his toxic agenda while tackling the root causes that have led to his re-election: worsening standards, rising inequalities, deepening poverty, and a system of monopoly capitalism which erodes our democracies while placing profit over life itself. It’s a big task. But by forging solidarities across our global movements we will create the transformative changes we need to see a better world.
Gaza ceasefire must lead to wider justice for Palestinians
There was relief in January when a deal was finally signed to stop Israel’s bombing of Gaza, temporarily at least.
Global Justice Now joined more than a dozen UK NGOs in calling for the UK government to push for the ceasefire to be a starting point for justice and accountability, not an endpoint that allows the Israeli authorities to continue their blockade, occupation and oppression of Palestinians.
As Ninety-Nine goes to press the six-week ceasefire continues to hold, with the next stages – including a permanent end to Israel's attacks –dependent on additional negotiations. Yet even if the deal holds, after 15 months of intense bombing and destruction, Israel’s military has reduced huge parts of Gaza to rubble. Palestinians who have survived the onslaught face unimaginable living conditions, with Israel having destroyed
water facilities, hospitals, schools and homes, along with swathes of farmland. A comprehensive rebuilding effort, led by Palestinians and with Palestinian self-determination at its core, is required.
Yet alongside the ceasefire in Gaza, Israel has increased its attacks on the West Bank (the Palestinian territory to the west of the Jordan river which Israel has also illegally occupied since 1967).
It follows the accelerated construction of illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank during the period of the attack on Gaza, with settler violence against Palestinians also increasing markedly.
A key Israeli minister has also ordered preparations for the annexation of settlements in the occupied West Bank.
The last year and a half has shown more devastatingly than ever that Israel will not moderate its genocidal violence and repression against
Palestinians without meaningful opposition. With President Trump installing uncritical supporters of Israel to key political and diplomatic positions, the need for other governments, including the UK, to do more than issue mild rebukes at Israel’s most egregious crimes is urgent and vital.
We will continue campaigning for a suspension of all arms sales to Israel – including the F-35 fighter jet parts which the government has refused to include in its partial ban on spurious grounds. We are also leading the campaign for a suspension of trade talks with Israel, and the existing UKIsrael trade deal, until Israel ends its violations of international law.
Read the joint statement at: globaljustice.org.uk/gaza-ceasefire
Support builds for Fossil Fuel Treaty
Global Justice Now’s campaign for a Fossil Fuel NonProliferation Treaty has had some big successes in recent months, as support for the treaty grows. In December, Manchester City Council announced that it had endorsed the treaty. This win was entirely brought about by local activists, who campaigned for several months to get their city council on board with this plan to take on the fossil fuel industry. Glasgow City Council also endorsed the treaty in November, following a campaign by our activists.
negotiate a Fossil Fuel Treaty. That now makes 16 countries across four continents all sending a clear message of their demand for a fossil-free future.
With enough countries on board, this proposal has the power to make a significant, tangible impact on the climate crisis. We’ll keep up the pressure throughout 2025 to help to make sure that happens.
Ask your MP to sign the motion in Parliament: globaljustice.org.uk/fft-motion
Further success followed in January when Dundee City Council endorsed the treaty, again thanks to our local campaigning. Dundee activists made a local media appearance and got national recognition, with Green MSP for North East Scotland, Maggie Chapman, tabling a motion in Holyrood congratulating them on their campaign.
Glasgow, Manchester and Dundee represent three more major cities in the UK calling for a Fossil Fuel Treaty. They join a group that includes London, Birmingham, Brighton and Edinburgh as well as several other cities and towns across the country.
Meanwhile, Labour MP Rachael Maskell has tabled an early day motion in Westminster in support of the treaty, after a visit from Global Justice York. Labour, Liberal Democrat and Independent MPs added their names to the motion in January after thousands of our campaigners wrote to their MPs online. Increasingly, this motion is demonstrating broad support for the treaty from all corners of the UK and a range of political parties.
It’s amazing to see momentum building for the Fossil Fuel Treaty in the UK. And at an international level there was good news too: in December two more countries, Pakistan and the Bahamas, joined the bloc of 14 nations seeking to
Above: Activists hand in a petition to the Scottish Parliament.
Right: Filipino activist Mitzi Jonelle Tan and Colombian consul general Irene Vélez Torres joined our speaker tour in October.
Colombia demands end to corporate courts deal with UK
After getting the UK to quit the climate-wrecking Energy Charter Treaty in 2024, Global Justice Now’s trade campaign is moving on to removing corporate courts from all UK trade and investment deals. At the end of last year, we began a new campaign focused on the UK-Colombia bilateral investment treaty, which contains investor-state dispute settlement, or ISDS, and became eligible for renegotiation in October.
We have achieved a significant milestone in the campaign already, with the Colombian government announcing that it is seeking to renegotiate this deal. This followed our meeting with the country’s consul general, who escalated the issue to Colombia’s president, and its ambassador to the UK, who publicly called such treaties a “bloodbath”. President Gustavo
Petro said in December that allowing such corporate courts to override national law has put Colombia “in the wolf’s mouth”.
While Colombian movements have been vocal on the impact of ISDS on their struggles over land, water and human rights, and its government had previously made some positive noises about standing up to the regime (see pages 10-12), securing this public demand is a strategic necessity to convince the UK to come to the table. Now we’ll be upping the pressure on the UK trade minister to take this first step away from the wider outdated and toxic ISDS system.
Call on the UK to scrap the Colombia deal: globaljustice.org.uk/colombia-action
New film series exposes global health gap
Global Justice Now has produced a series of short films about the big pharma companies that put profit before health – and the people fighting to make medicines accessible to all.
In this mini-series, titled Two Worlds, activists, patients, and health workers describe a global health divide where huge parts of the world are prevented from accessing vital medicines. The films portray personal testimonies from the sharp end of a deeply unjust system. In one film, a Liberian nurse and union leader describes how he worked to protect his colleagues during the deadly Ebola outbreak in 2014 – a disease which had been cropping up for years while pharma companies ignored the need for a vaccine.
But the films are also stories of hope. Another tells the story of Sibongile Tshabalala, who was for years priced out of essential HIV treatments in South Africa, but has now become a lead campaigner in the struggle to make medicines universally available. There is also a glimpse of a better future: scientists banding together to build an alternative to the big pharma model, collaborating on projects where science and knowledge is shared and research is directed by health needs, not profit.
Made in collaboration with filmmakers in the global south, the films have been released online and are available for local screenings now.
Watch the series at: www.twoworldsfilms.co.uk
Amnesty condemns Israel’s genocide in Gaza
Amnesty International published a report in December concluding that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. The 296-page report details acts carried out by Israel prohibited under the Genocide Convention, including killings and inflicting upon Palestinians in Gaza “conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction”. Concluding
that Israel had acted with genocidal intent, the human rights organisation considered the “dehumanising and genocidal statements” made by Israeli government and military officials and Israel's broader history of apartheid and its blockade of Gaza.
Coming almost a year after the International Court of Justice opened a genocide investigation against Israel, the report is an
important tool for holding Israel to account, as well as other governments which have offered Israel support. It argues that any states continuing to transfer arms to Israel (the UK’s partial arms ban still allows for shipments of parts for F-35 fighter jets used by Israel) risk complicity in the genocide.
Pacific Islands take climate fight to The Hague
In December, Vanuatu spearheaded a coalition of more than 100 countries asking the International Court of Justice in The Hague to advise on states’ legal obligations to prevent climate change, in the largest case ever put before it. The coalition argued that states must be legally accountable for the damage caused by their emissions, and act to prevent
further harm. “They want to continue with business-as-usual when the world is burning”, said Vishal Prasad, of Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change.
However, polluting countries argued that the UN’s COP climate process – where polluters stymie progress – must remain the only forum for deciding states’ climate
obligations. Pacific island states are undeterred in their demands for justice. “We look for recognition that the conduct which has already caused immense harm to my people and so many others is unlawful, that it must cease, and that its consequences must be repaired,” said Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu’s Special Envoy for Climate Change.
A Led By Donkeys stunt in December after foreign secretary David Lammy criticised the use of the term.
New research by LobbyControl, published with Global Justice Now and the Balanced Economy Project in January, found that five big tech companiesGoogle, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Applehave a combined market capitalisation of €11.9 trillion, equivalent to 11% of global GDP and more than 168 lower-income countries combined.
Migrant workers on UK farms demand rights
Migrant farmworkers from collective Justice Is Not Seasonal took their demands for an end to exploitation in UK agriculture to the Home Office in January. It follows a UN letter to the government last May warning that some seasonal workers have reasonable grounds to believe they are victims of human trafficking and modern slavery.
Banks told to stop funding Mozambique gas plant
A group of more than 100 NGOs have called on private banks and public lenders to stop financing a liquefied natural gas plant being built by French fossil fuel giant TotalEnergies in Mozambique, after allegations of a massacre by a Mozambican military unit operating out of the plant.
Kenya ends Dutch deal over corporate courts
Kenya confirmed in November that it has terminated its bilateral investment treaty with the Netherlands. It joins a growing wave of global south countries rethinking outdated trade rules that put corporate profits above people and planet.
The move came after a crosscontinental campaign, with Kenyan and Dutch civil society organisations teaming up to expose the dangers of investorstate dispute settlement (ISDS) contained in the treaty. These corporate courts let multinational companies sue governments
for huge sums of money or bully countries out of policies they dislike. James Ketta of ActionAid Kenya said the win “shows the power of civil society engagement”.
South Africa, Tanzania and Burkina Faso have already terminated their treaties with the Netherlands – whose investors are behind only the US in being the most aggressive users of corporate courts. UK companies are the third biggest users, showing the importance of ensuring UK treaties are next in line for campaigning efforts.
No peace with nature without global justice
Late in 2024, Colombia hosted the UN biodiversity conference in the city of Cali. The country’s progressive government hoped to make it a ‘people’s conference’, with a huge programme of events open to all. Its slogan, ‘Peace with Nature’, resonated in a country whose own peace process with rebel groups remains fragile. At the previous conference in 2022, nations had agreed to protect 30% of Earth for nature, though details around financing and monitoring still remained. In Cali, despite positive developments on including Indigenous communities
in the decision-making process, and an agreement in principle on a global levy on conservation products made using genetic data from nature, little progress was made.
According to the Global Forest Coalition, the problem is structural: “The economic model that global south countries are forced to pursue by the international financial institutions, based on natural resource extraction with highly unequal distribution of benefits and impacts, is driving extinction and global biodiversity loss.”
Afro-Colombians demonstrate to keep oil in the ground during the Cali biodiversity conference.
From Big Tech barons to oil and gas giants, Donald Trump is once again a president for the 1%. But we must look for possibilities, not just threats, in the years ahead, argues NICK DEARDEN.
Trump has returned to his throne. An army of white supremacists back him on the streets, while the richest men on earth bankroll his destructive agenda. Government leaders from across the world take turns to bend the knee, as Trump’s chaotic mode of ‘governing’ induces panic.
It is a grim moment, but it is also not without opportunities for those of us who want a very different world.
Trump was always the president of the 1%, but he kept a large section of society on board by distracting and pointing at ‘the other’ – migrants at home, China overseas. But in 2024, his closeness to the global elite became
even more obvious as the Big Tech oligarchy lined up behind him.
WEALTH AND POWER
Trump won because, for many ordinary Americans, President Biden’s economic policies were not radical or fast enough to make a change in their lives. Yet the richest backed Trump precisely because Bidenomics was too radical for them.
Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg’s conversion is instructive. He didn’t simply see which way the wind was blowing and quietly jump ship. He trashed Bidenomics, showing how personally affronted he had been by being hauled
Below: Elon Musk spent millions on Trump's election, and now has a role slashing US government bodies.
Opposite: Protesters in New York during Trump's inauguration.
before Congress and having his business empire threatened.
Moving towards Trump, Zuckerberg showed that he will tolerate no dent in his wealth. When it comes to it, he will take a far-right authoritarian leader if it preserves his power.
The energy sector and their backers on Wall Street came to a similar conclusion. Net zero has become
a dirty word, not because you can’t make a reasonable return on renewable energy, but because you can’t extract the sky-high profits which they expect.
Clearly, we cannot both fight climate change and also maintain the power of these global elites.
A MULTIPOLAR WORLD?
Underling these dynamics are radical shifts in geopolitics. Trump is the howl of a declining empire. For the last 40 years, the US has maintained its position through overwhelming military might and control of the most important and valuable technologies.
That worked, until China combined its huge size with something that no other global south country has been allowed to do – a massive statedirected programme of development. It leapfrogged the US on critical technologies.
China’s integration in the global economy also had a severe impact on the US manufacturing base and American workers. It’s a key reason that Trump manages to buy a part of the working population into his agenda. But for America’s elite what’s important is the power which comes
from the technologies it controls. Trump’s manner is frightening. That’s the point. But he cannot hold back the tide of geopolitics. Ultimately, he will likely hasten US decline, and help the rise of a multipolar world.
A DEADLY ECONOMIC MODEL
Trump’s policies could easily create serious conflict. His immediate decisions, like on USAID, will cost lives. And dealing with climate change cannot wait out Trump’s term.
Yet we cannot look backwards in a forlorn attempt to recreate a more stable world. Trump, after all, did not emerge from a world at peace with itself. He is a symptom of a deadly economic model which has produced unprecedented inequality and environmental destruction. The battle for global justice has suffered hugely under this model.
A multipolar world could change things, providing space for countries which need to develop their own path. This is starting to happen. Governments are taking steps, timid at the moment, to reclaim their financial and resource sovereignty. Even governments with whom we share little will walk more quickly in this
direction.
To turn this in a positive, democratic direction, we need international movements. It’s true that our movements are weak. But the response to the genocide in Gaza shows that we can build a something powerful, especially among young people. We will need to take this to the next level as the economy takes an increasingly militaristic turn.
We’ll also need to challenge not just Trump but the causes of Trump – not least our own government’s economic policies, premised on the idea that growth should triumph over everything else.
Four years of a Trump government is not a positive prospect. But we must be honest, the day before his election, we were still headed in the wrong direction. There is now clarity around the scale of our task and there is no shortcut. The world is deeply unstable. But it is only from such moments that really big changes ever arise. And we have never needed big changes more than now.
Nick Dearden is director of Global Justice Now. A longer version of this article appeared on the New Internationalist website: globaljustice.org. uk/newint-trump
Latin America’s growing resistance to corporate courts
From Ecuador to Colombia, the shadowy decades-long regime of investor tribunals is slowly being challenged, writes former foreign minister GUILLAUME LONG.
In recent years, Latin America has become a focal point for the growing global resistance against a corporate-focused supranational legal regime known as investment-state dispute settlement (ISDS). Shrouded in deliberately inaccessible language, ISDS was initially the exclusive domain of a small group of technocrats and corporate lawyers. But in recent years, the issue has been steadily incorporated into the political debate, and now features in the democratic demands of political parties, unions and civil society organisations.
Today, many movements throughout Latin America denounce ISDS for enabling corporations to sue states over regulatory measures aimed at protecting public health, the environment, or labour rights. A growing number of national governments are also openly critical of the broader imbalance of power created by ISDS, and how it deters them from carrying out necessary public policies.
ECUADOR LEADS THE WAY
Ecuador provides a compelling case study of the region’s shift away from ISDS. In 2008, Ecuador’s new constitution, approved in a referendum, effectively banned extra-regional arbitration. But it took almost a decade, under the leadership of former president Rafael Correa, to rid Ecuador of all ISDS mechanisms.
Ecuador’s referendum was a great democratic victory over corporate courts.
Ecuador first withdrew from the World Bank’s International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) – the forum in which most ISDS cases are adjudicated – in 2009 and then conducted a comprehensive review of all its bilateral investment treaties (BITs). A commission of experts audited the impact of Ecuador’s BITs, concluding that they had been fiscally costly, hampered the country’s policy space, and had failed to lead to a significant rise in foreign investment, particularly in the non-oil sector. By 2017, the government had terminated 24 BITs, thereby withdrawing from all ISDS commitments.
In the last two decades, countries such as Bolivia, Venezuela, and Ecuador have blazed the trail in rejecting ISDS. Now, progressive governments, for example in Colombia and Honduras, are leading the charge. But this remains an uphill struggle: decades of vested interests in ISDS compounded by the return of conservative forces means important gains run the risk of being overturned through the pressure of global powers and transnational capital.
However, the three governments that came after Correa all attempted to revive ISDS. Former president Guillermo Lasso even put pressure on Ecuador’s constitutional court to reinterpret the constitution’s article 422 that bans ISDS. Unsuccessful, Lasso settled for rejoining ICSID, which he did without congressional approval in direct violation of the constitution. But short of having ISDS clauses in international treaties, ICSID arbitration can’t really occur. As a result, Lasso’s successor, president Daniel Noboa – primarily motivated by the EcuadorCanada free trade agreement currently under
Ecuadorian campaigners hold a press conference to welcome the rejection of corporate courts in a referendum last year. Overleaf: The prime minister meets President Gustavo Petro of Colombia at the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in November.
Right:
negotiation and the protection of Canadian mining interests – tried to overturn the constitutional ban on ISDS through a popular referendum.
But in a win for people power, in April of last year Ecuadorian voters gave the return to ISDS a resounding ‘no’ in this referendum, with 64.8% voting against changing article 422 of the constitution: a resounding defeat for Noboa’s agenda and a great democratic victory over ISDS.
HONDURAS VS SILICON VALLEY
Another recent battle in the region’s resistance to ISDS came with Honduras’s 2023 decision to withdraw from ICSID. This was also driven by concerns over the financial implications of arbitration cases and the negative impact of ISDS on sovereign policy decisions born out of the democratic will of the population.
In 2022, a US corporation called Prospera announced that it was suing Honduras for almost $10.8 billion. In the absence of any sizable investment, Prospera claimed a loss of future profits on the Caribbean island of Roatán, where a group of Silicon Valley billionaires had established a project to build a charter city, free of government regulation and endowed with its own sovereign institutions.
Prospera’s case was challenging Honduras’s ban on 'employment and economic development zones', or ZEDEs, which allow private corporations to establish their own laws, tax systems, and security forces beyond the reach of the Honduras government.
ZEDEs were first established by decree in 2011, after the 2009 military coup that overthrew a
left-of-centre government and brought right-wing elites back to power. When the constitutional court found this decree in violation of Honduran sovereignty and overrode it, its judges were purged and replaced with pro-ZEDE magistrates. By 2013, the ZEDE law had passed and under the corrupt presidency of Juan Orlando Hernández until 2022 – now serving a prison sentence in the United States for narcotrafficking – several ZEDEs were created, including Prospera.
But as in Ecuador, democratic forces began challenging this corporate privilege and impunity, and the slogan ‘No to the ZEDEs’ became a key rallying cry of Xiomara Castro’s 2021 presidential campaign. After her victory, the Honduran Congress voted unanimously to repeal the ZEDE law.
The Honduran people’s decision to reign in corporate power at the ballot box has brought punishment that now looms over the country. Prospera’s ISDS case, at approximately one third of the country’s GDP, would mean bankruptcy. Despite this intimidation, the government’s resolve has remained firm. By exiting ICSID, Honduras has sent a strong signal that it does not wish to be bound by the abuses of ISDS, nor blackmailed into submission.
COLOMBIA JOINS THE FRAY
In recent years, Colombia has also become a battleground in the struggle against ISDS and corporate impunity.
This has emerged from its recent strides forward in protecting communities and ecologies. In June 2015, Colombia enacted a national development plan, banning exploration and exploitation of nonrenewable resources in high-altitude ecosystems crucial for supplying water to over 70% of the population. In 2017, Colombia’s constitutional court ruled in favour of the Wayúu Indigenous
people and halted Glencore’s diversion of the Bruno Stream for its already mammoth coal mine. Both measures resulted in a flurry of egregious ISDS cases.
Most recently, the Petro government introduced a new law on equality and social justice, aiming to raise $4.4 billion via a surtax on oil and coal companies for social investment, resulting in new threats of ISDS cases.
The tipping point came as a tribunal ordered Colombia to pay Spanish company Telefónica $380 million in damages – the largest award it has faced – on top of growing pressure from social movements. In November 2024, the Petro government finally announced that it would review and renegotiate the ISDS clauses in its free trade agreements and investment treaties, and that it was evaluating Colombia’s withdrawal from ICSID. And in December 2024, trade minister Luis Carlos Reyes confirmed intentions to renegotiate the UK-Colombia BIT.
The reaction from the Colombian right-wing and from various spokespersons for the interests of transnational corporations, especially given the size and economic importance of
Colombia in the region, has been very aggressive, with visions of imminent economic collapse being brandished to intimidate the government. This year promises to be crucial in Colombia’s struggle against ISDS –and how the UK responds to its BIT with Colombia being put on the table will be instructive.
A WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY
ISDS is increasingly being challenged on the world stage. Many advanced economies are now also taking steps to limit their exposure. The United States, Canada, and Mexico revised ISDS provisions in the United States-MexicoCanada Agreement (USMCA) in 2018. Several European countries including the UK have exited the Energy Charter Treaty, one of the most important ISDS treaties.
Today, almost all European governments understand that ISDS stands in the way of environmental regulations and the energy transition. Yet many still promote ISDS in their agreements with developing countries in order to protect their transnational corporations from government regulation. This hypocrisy must be exposed.
Ultimately, the abuse of ISDS regimes can only be defeated through the joint actions of developing countries, and solidarity across borders. Individual withdrawals will continue to be met by fierce retaliation, with ISDS sunset clauses prolonging the protection of pre-existing investment for decades. This means regional bodies and collective state measures should be at the forefront of the rolling back of ISDS for their member countries, and movements in the global north should be helping call their governments to the table.
Guillaume Long is a former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ecuador. He is currently a Senior Fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington DC.
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The debt crisis is back. And so is the movement for justice
The shocks of pandemic, extreme weather and war have left the global south with the biggest debt mountain in decades. That’s why there’s a new international effort to break the cycle, writes HEIDI CHOW.
“Public services are in crisis – pupils aren’t getting exercise books, and some schools don’t even have chairs or desks for the children. Food prices have sky-rocketed and in hospitals, patients are asked to pay for medication that is meant to be free.”
This is the harsh reality of the global debt crisis as described by Bernard Anaba, a debt campaigner from Ghana. In all debt crises, resources for essential public services like healthcare, education and for fighting the climate crisis are stripped away to prioritise debt repayments to wealthy lenders in rich countries. And Ghana is one of 54 countries in a debt crisis right now.
It’s the biggest global debt crisis in thirty years – debt repayments have trebled in the last decade. Racist tropes assign blame to global south countries for incompetence or corruption, but these are a damaging smokescreen to mask the colonial roots of the crisis.
DEBT AND POWER
without the armies and soldiers.
The pandemic plunged over 50 countries into a debt crisis that subsequent shocks have deepened.
This means lower-income countries are structurally predisposed to high levels of debt – all it takes is an external shock to push countries into crisis. And this is exactly what has happened. After the global financial crisis of 2008, interest rates plummeted in the West, so lenders pushed their loans onto lower-income countries which they could charge higher rates of interest. A collapse in commodity prices in 2014 forced countries to borrow more to cover the drastic decline in export income. Then the pandemic in 2020 plunged over fifty countries into debt crisis as tourism income dried up and commodity prices crashed.
After independence, former colonies emerged into a global economy where the rules on areas such as tax, trade and finance were written in the interests of corporations and rich governments. With the rules rigged against them, global south countries have struggled to build diversified and resilient economies and instead remain trapped in exporting low-value commodities and dependent on debt to meet basic needs. It’s colonial extraction and control,
The subsequent shocks of Russia’s war in Ukraine, global food and fuel price hikes, rising interest rates and climate-driven disasters combined with a disastrously inept debt relief mechanism have deepened the debt crisis. Global financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have responded by reviving the 1980s debt crisis playbook of lending more money, piling ever higher an overwhelming mountain of debt.
This merely kicks the can down the road, while shamelessly rewarding the banks and hedge funds that lent money recklessly, as they get paid back in full and the debt gets transferred to public lenders. The global debt system still has no effective and fair process for delivering debt relief – instead private lenders are systemically
Right: Heidi speaks at a launch rally outside the Treasury in January.
rewarded for reckless lending, time and time again.
We need to break this cycle. And the opportunity is in front of us, right now.
A NEW GLOBAL PUSH
2025 is a Jubilee Year and the Catholic Church is mobilising its congregations globally to campaign on debt. Debt campaigners of all faiths and none are joining forces to make 2025 a year to force the priorities of lower-income countries onto the political agenda.
We’ve done it before, and we can do it again. The global Jubilee 2000 campaign mobilised huge numbers of people and activist groups across the UK and around the world. At the G8 summit in Birmingham in 1998, 70,000 people joined hands to form a human chain which propelled the issue to the top of the political
agenda. The campaign eventually won a staggering $130 billion of debt cancellation for lower-income countries and enabled countries like Bolivia, Malawi and Tanzania to invest in healthcare and education, transforming the lives of millions of people.
But while a record amount of unjust debt was written off, the debt system itself and its distorted incentives were left untouched. This time round, we are fighting to change the system.
The Jubilee 2025 campaign, Cancel Debt, Choose Hope, is calling for debt cancellation for countries in crisis. We are also fighting for new debt justice laws to make private lenders take part in debt relief. And we are calling for a new global debt framework to prevent future crises from happening. These are the demands from global south campaigners. This year, the first UN Financing for Development conference in a decade, the G20 led by South Africa, and the UN climate
talks in Brazil are critical moments to stand in solidarity with affected communities.
“This is the opportunity to say how we are being affected … we are calling out the global north countries to stand with us, to fight with us, to demand debt cancellation, to demand debt justice.” Zambian youth activist Precious Kalombwana’s words are a clarion call to hold our government accountable for perpetuating a global debt system that continues to extract, exploit and control. The Jubilee 2000 campaign succeeded through the tenacity, passion and solidarity of grassroots campaigners in the UK and across the world. It’s time to build the movement to win debt justice for good.
Find out more about Jubilee 2025, Cancel Debt, Choose Hope at:
Heidi Chow is executive director of Debt Justice, formerly Jubilee Debt Campaign.
While We Wait
Photographer RAYNA CARRUTHERS
’s Glasgow exhibition focuses on the lives of women who have been forcibly displaced in Jordan and are awaiting resettlement to North America or Europe.
Rayna Carruthers lived in Jordan from 2022 to 2023. During that year, she took women’s portraits, heard their stories and learned about the conflicts which had forced them to flee. Her exhibition at the Glasgow Women’s Library speaks to the lives of these women in Jordan but also seeks to raise awareness around the inhumane and discriminatory asylum laws here in the UK and the role that Western countries and the climate crisis are playing in exacerbating forced displacement worldwide.
As of June 2024, approximately 120 million people worldwide have been forcibly displaced, a figure that continues to grow each year. Jordan, since its independence, has been an important sanctuary during numerous displacement crises. Since the country gained Independence from the British and its borders were defined, Palestinians, Iraqis, Syrians, Yemenis, Sudanese, and Somalians have sought refuge within its borders, making Jordan the country with the second-highest number of refugees per capita globally, after Lebanon.
Rayna Carruthers: While We Wait is at Glasgow Women’s Library until 29 March 2025.
Rayna Carruthers is a photographer based in Scotland focusing on humanitarian and editorial work. She has worked with organisations like the British Red Cross and Givology as well as other more grassroots NGOs. Her work has been influenced partly by a lifelong interest in migration, a passion rooted in her grandparents’ experience of immigrating to the UK in the 1950s. raynacarruthers.com/portfolio
Behind the scenes of Fatouma Fatouma embarked on a long and arduous journey from Somalia more than 16 years ago in search of safety and stability. Her initial refuge was in Saudi Arabia, but as a single woman, her circumstances remained precarious. Hoping for better opportunities, she heard that Syria might offer asylum and decided to pursue that path. Her journey eventually led
her to Jordan, where she was smuggled across the border by car. However, the gruelling journey took a toll on her health, leaving her too weak to continue to Syria. She found solace among a community of Somali refugees in Amman, Jordan, where she has remained ever since.
Fatma is originally from Yemen. After war broke out in her home city, her daughter was killed in her back garden after an ordinance exploded near their home. Rebel forces began approaching her neighbourhood, gathering up men to join them and fight. Fatma hid her son from them. When her neighbours began informing on her to the rebel forces, she decided that she needed to leave with her son. “My daughter had died. Young people were dying from war. Enough, I didn’t want that for my son.” Fatma has been waiting for resettlement for more than 7 years. She is afraid to return to Yemen as she thinks she is considered a traitor. Fatma sits as I interview her. Her fingers are marked by henna. Henna is an important aspect of female beauty in Yemen and other countries. Women regularly wear henna, especially on important religious celebrations and family occasions.
Julia (name changed to protect identity) is originally from Somalia and has been waiting for resettlement for more than 8 years. Julia faced immense hardship in Somalia, where instability left her homeless and without a family. Determined to find safety, she embarked on a journey to Yemen by boat. The voyage was one of the most harrowing experiences of her life, filled with fear and uncertainty about whether she would survive. Yet, upon reaching Yemen, her relief was soon overshadowed by a new challenge, navigating life in
a country where she couldn’t speak Arabic. In Yemen, Julia found work as a housemaid, doing her best to rebuild her life. However, the outbreak of war forced her to flee once again. She made the difficult journey to Jordan, seeking refuge and the hope of a more stable future. While waiting for resettlement Julia had a daughter. “After I had a daughter my worries and anxieties changed. I no longer worry about myself. Now I want to do everything I can for her and her future.”
Trump 2.0 poses an even bigger threat to migrants in the United States. Here’s how we fight back, writes SILKY SHAH.
If the border wall symbolized Trump’s first run for president, the 2024 election was defined by the call for mass deportations. While both parties have aligned around border policy, the starkest contrast between the two is the approach to immigrants currently living in the US.
Prior to Trump taking office in 2017, the immigrant rights movement fought back against mass deportations under Barack Obama labelling him “deporter-in-chief.” Some 400,000 immigrants were formally deported from the US each year, meaning they were subject to a fiveyear bar to re-enter the country and could face lengthy prison sentences if they attempted to do so.
The growing outrage over mass deportations led some members of Obama’s own party, especially at the local and state level, to pass robust sanctuary laws to prevent collaborations between ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and local police.
At the federal level, Obama was compelled to expand protections to broad categories of immigrants through programs such as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and Temporary Protected Status, which allow them to live and work in the US without fear of deportation.
But with Trump’s return, we can expect not only mass raids of homes, worksites and communities, but the stripping of status from millions of people. With the scale of what has been proposed, some 28 million people could be at risk of family separation in 2025.
WE’VE DONE IT BEFORE
Given the “migrant crime” panic stoked by the Republicans, we should anticipate Trump aides like anti-immigrant zealot Stephen Miller coordinating with local sheriffs to round up those they have deemed “criminal aliens.”
The scale of operations that have been proposed for Trump’s mass deportations will
require billions of dollars. We must push to stop the injection of resources into the deportation machine and the push back against draconian immigration policies in Congress.
Despite the right-wing capture of the immensely destructive machinery of state, we can mount an effective resistance. And
'Daughter of immigrants': Los Angeles protests against Donald Trump's deportations in February.
we’ve done it before. Now is the time to build up community networks to defend immigrants and other marginalized communities who will bear the brunt of the attacks from the new administration.
Expanding the movement by educating people about their rights, exposing the harms of the system, broadening the base of support and waging campaigns against the mass deportation agenda will be critical to planting the seeds for long-term change..
Silky Shah is the executive director of Detention Watch Network, a national coalition building power to abolish immigration detention in the US. This is an extract from an article written for Truthout, republished under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).
Rashid Khalidi draws on extensive archive research and his own family’s experiences to write an essential history of Palestine. Covering six key periods over the last century, with a new afterword on Israel’s current genocidal war on Gaza, Khalidi makes the case that this history has been a colonial process, similar to that which Western powers undertook in Africa, not a conflict between two equal national movements fighting over the same land, as it is often portrayed.
From Britain’s brutal divide and rule policies after the First World War, through successive wars – some explicit and rapid, some slow and grinding –Palestinians have had their homeland taken from them piece by piece, backed by major powers at every turn. Khalidi's weaving in of personal and family history is effective and moving.
Whatever you think about the path to peace and justice today, this is the context that is glaringly missing from the daily news cycle.
Tim Bierley
MINORITY RULE: ADVENTURES IN THE CULTURE WAR
Ash Sarkar
Bloomsbury, 2025
Ash Sarkar’s debut is a clear-eyed, engaging read that exposes the ways divisive ‘culture war’ narratives pushed by the super-rich have worked to fragment and drive divisions within the 99%. Ranging from media framing to economic policies, Sarkar argues that a multi-pronged assault on the UK’s diverse working class has worked to erode our living standards and sense of collective consciousness – for the benefit of the profit margins of the super-rich.
The close of the book turns the spotlight on the real wealthy elite, ending in a searing critique of the neoliberalisation of our everyday lives and the
SOUNDTRACK TO A COUP D’ETAT
Johan Grimonprez, 2024
2h 30mins
“The people of the Congo are entitled to build up their country in peace and freedom,” President Eisenhower tells the UN in 1960, around the time he was ordering the CIA to assassinate the country’s first democratically elected leader, Patrice Lumumba. As it turned out, the Belgians got there first, but the US was heavily implicated, as Johan Grimonprez shows in this compelling exposé of post-colonial sabotage.
The film features a heady mix of archive footage, interviews, historical quotes and, unexpectedly, jazz. But the music is not just a soundtrack, it’s part of the plot: a US-funded Louis Armstrong ‘goodwill mission’ in the wake of independence provides a smokescreen for US meddling. Congo’s
assault on our democracy that new forms of monopoly capitalism represent. Minority Rule is a timely reminder that in finding strength through solidarity we can not just acknowledge – but dismantle – the scourges of racism, misogyny, transphobia, poverty and inequality in our society that ultimately leave us all poorer.
Anita Bhadani
resourcerich Katanga region – a source of uranium then, and critical minerals used in electric cars and mobile phones today – could not be allowed to fall into the hands of the pan-Africanist Lumumba. It’s a story I thought I largely knew, but Grimonprez brings it to life with fresh detail and perspective.
Jonathan Stevenson
trade justice Leave a legacy for
Trade rules can make or break a better world – empowering corporations or protecting public resources. That’s why we are fighting for trade justice, and have been for decades. Thanks to our supporters we’ve had some important wins.
• 2024: Pushing the UK government to leave the climate-wrecking Energy Charter Treaty
• 2016: Shutting down the toxic USEU trade deal TTIP
• 2001: Removing the privatisation of public services in the global south from the GATS trade deal
Year on year, we’ll keep campaigning on trade. By leaving a gift in your Will to Global Justice Now you can ensure we create lasting change for the generations to come.
