Book launch seminar: ‘Sovereign Debt and Socio-Economic Rights Beyond Crisis: The Neoliberalisation of International Law’

This seminar is hosted by the Centre for Human Rights and the School of Law Research Seminar Series. Our series offers exciting insights into ongoing research projects within the law school and conducted by our external research partners. We often feature work from our research centres (the Centre for American Legal Studies, the Centre for Human Rights, the Centre for Science, Law and Policy, and the International Business Law Research Group). Our work is often transdisciplinary, dealing with law's relationship with broadly defined social justice, policy-making, science and much more. Join us for invigorating discussion! 

In this session, we hear from Dr Emma Scali.  Dr Scali is Lecturer in Law and Course Director for the LLMs in International Law and International Human Rights at Birmingham City University. She holds a Doctorate in Law from the University of Nottingham, and her current research interests and publications centre around human rights, sovereign financing, and the global economic order. Her monograph on Sovereign Debt and Socio-economic Rights Beyond Crisis: The Neoliberalisation of International Law has been recently published by Cambridge University Press (2022). She assisted the mandate of the UN Independent Expert on Foreign Debt and Human Rights and is currently undertaking debt and human rights-related research as a consultant for the OHCHR South-East Asia Regional Office (SEARO).

In this session, Dr Scali will deliver the book launch presentation and the Informal conversation will be led by Professor Jon Yorke (BCU School of Law), followed by interactive Q&A:

Title

Book launch seminar: ‘Sovereign Debt and Socio-Economic Rights Beyond Crisis: The Neoliberalisation of International Law’

About the book

Sovereign financing – or the financing of the public sector – is central to the realisation of human rights. However, since the 1970s, it has evolved, globally, into a predominantly debt- and market-based practice: states, including nowadays many advanced economies, increasingly rely on debt, global financial markets and international institutions to fund their sovereign functions. This trend has been worryingly intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic and the recent global macroeconomic shocks triggered by the aggression of Ukraine, and it ultimately points to a form of ‘public poverty’ linked, among other things, to the growing privatisation of global wealth and the increasing pressures that governments across the world face to step in and level off – often by recourse to public resources – the structural imbalances and recurring manifold crises of financialised global capitalism.

Going beyond strictly 'post-crisis' approaches and emphasising the structural character of public and private debt in the contemporary global neoliberal economic order, this book offers a critical discussion of the relationship between sovereign debt and socio-economic rights under international (human rights) law. It reflects on the implications of mounting debt for the actual ability of states to realise human rights in a world of escalating indebtedness, inequality and insecurity and, through a comprehensive analysis of the 2009 Greek debt crisis and the main post-crisis reforms of relevant international and EU law, the book argues that the 'neoliberalisation’ of international law has essentially been advanced in the wake of the Eurozone debt crisis.

If you have any questions, contact Iyan Offor, the Research Seminar Series leader at iyan.offor@bcu.ac.uk