South Sudan offers to accept more US deportees: Report
The African country has also urged Washington to lift sanctions imposed on one of its top officials, the report added, citing people familiar with the matter and diplomatic correspondence.
Reuters could not immediately verify the report.
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The much-discussed Jubilee Report, emerging from expert deliberations commissioned by the Vatican, diagnoses the acute debt distress strangling developing economies, particularly in Africa, with commendable clarity. It presents a familiar litany of systemic failures: pro-cyclical capital flows, creditor-friendly legal architectures in New York and London, the inadequacy of debt sustainability analyses, and the perverse incentives perpetuated by international financial institutions. Its prescriptions, including a new heavily indebted poor countries initiative, legal reforms to curb predatory litigation, shifts toward 'growth-oriented austerity,' and massive increases in multilateral financing, echo decades of expert consensus. Yet, a fundamental flaw remains. The report's prescriptions rely on coordinated global goodwill and structural reform that is demonstrably absent in today's fragmented world. For Africa, where public debt has outpaced national economic growth since 2013, and home to 751 million people in countries spending more on servicing external debt than on education or health — waiting for this global consensus is not strategy; it is surrender. The report's morally resonant idealism dangerously underestimates the entrenched hostility to meaningful concessions benefiting African economies and overlooks the imperative for radical, self-reliant solutions. Consider the sheer scale of the crisis versus the proposed global fixes. A total of 54 developing countries now allocate over 10 percent of public revenues merely to interest payments. In Africa, this fiscal hemorrhage directly competes with existential needs: costly climate adaptation for countries contributing minimally to emissions, yet facing devastating impacts, and investment in a youth population projected to reach 35 percent of the global total by 2050. The report rightly condemns the injustice, historical and ongoing, embedded in this dynamic. However, its central remedy, a heavily indebted poor countries initiative, requires unprecedented cooperation from diverse and often adversarial creditor blocs: traditional Paris Club members; newer bilateral lenders such as China; and, crucially, private bondholders who now dominate over 40 percent of low and lower-middle income country external debt. Regardless, historical precedent does not inspire confidence. A predecessor heavily indebted poor countries initiative, while delivering relief, failed to prevent recurrence precisely because it did not alter the fundamental dynamics or the structure of global finance. Why expect a sequel, demanding even greater concessions from powerful financial interests operating within unreformed legal jurisdictions, to succeed now? The Common Framework, hailed as progress, has delivered negligible relief precisely due to creditor discord and obstructionism. Betting Africa's future on such actors suddenly developing a collective conscience is not realism; it is negligence. Additionally, the report's reliance on international financial institutions as engines of reform and finance is equally problematic. It calls for an end to International Monetary Fund bailouts of private creditors; lower surcharges; massive SDR, or Special Drawing Right, reallocations; and transformed multilateral development bank lending models. Yet, the governance structures of these institutions remain frozen in mid-20th-century power dynamics that remain heavily skewed against African representation and influence. For instance, securing a $650 billion SDR allocation during the pandemic proved a herculean task; achieving the regular, larger, and equitably distributed issuances the report envisions, given rising fiscal nationalism and escalating geopolitical rivalries, seems quixotic. Moreover, the notion that these same institutions, historically enforcers of austerity and guardians of creditor interests, can reinvent themselves as champions of unconditional, mission-driven finance for African transformation ignores their institutional DNA and the political constraints imposed by their major shareholders. Meanwhile, the call for MDBs to lend massively in local currencies, while technically sound for reducing exchange rate risk, faces fierce resistance from bond markets and rating agencies wary of currency volatility, effectively limiting its scale without improbable capital increases. Furthermore, the report's focus on grand interventions, from debt buyback funds and global climate funds to international bankruptcy courts, fails to grapple with the toxic geopolitical environment. Historical prejudices framing African governance as inherently corrupt or incapable, combined with rising great power competition, actively work against complex cooperative frameworks perceived as primarily benefiting African countries. Solutions built on African agency, regional cohesion, and financial self-reliance offer a more realistic path out of the debt trap. Hafed Al-Ghwell In addition, resources for global funds are notoriously scarce and fiercely contested; establishing new international legal architectures faces veto points at every turn. The current global context is not merely indifferent to African debt distress; elements within it are actively hostile to solutions requiring hefty financial transfers or perceived concessions of leverage. Waiting for this hostility to abate condemns Africa to prolonged debt traps, draining precious reserves crucial for the continent's 1.4 billion people and, ultimately, global stability. The path forward, therefore, demands a harsh pivot toward solutions Africa controls, minimizing reliance on external mobilization vulnerable to global whims. This is not isolationism but pragmatic self-preservation. It requires, for instance, aggressively developing domestic capital markets. Africa's savings, estimated in the trillions of dollars collectively, are often parked in low-yield advanced economy assets or leave the continent entirely. Redirecting these resources requires efforts to deepen local bond markets, strengthen regulatory frameworks, and incentivize institutional investors to allocate capital locally. Second, the report mentions implementing strategic capital account regulations, but underplays their centrality. 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Hamas Says it Won't Disarm Unless Independent Palestinian State Established
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