On 19 September 2024, on the eve of the United Nations (UN) Summit of the Future, Results UK published Bad Loans, Poor Nutrition: Why debt justice – along with more and better ‘aid’ – is essential to end global malnutrition. This blog post outlines how we have used the report to advocate for debt justice over the past year.

But first, here is a quick recap of the report’s main findings. The 16 countries most affected by food crises paid $40.3 billion on external public debt service in 2023, up from $25.8 billion just two years earlier. On average, the governments of these countries spend around double the amount on external public debt payments than they spend on health. We argue that the UK occupies a unique position in the global sovereign debt system, and thus has a particular responsibility to resolve debt crises gripping the Global South and to prevent future crises.

Media engagement and email dissemination

One of the key pillars of any major report launch is media engagement. This went about as well as we could have reasonably expected. We had opinion pieces in The London Economic, Thomson Reuters Context, Global Policy, Chartist and From Poverty to Power, as well as letters in the Financial Times and Observer. Moreover, the report was featured in Devex and Independent Catholic News, and mentioned in The New Humanitarian. It also proved popular on social media. 

We distributed the report extensively via email, including to key officials in the UK Government (our primary target) and in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank (our secondary targets), which led to in-depth engagement with these targets. Further, the report was praised by various officials in several UN agencies, as well by notable activists and researchers working on debt, some of whom cited or referred to our analysis.

Grassroots and parliamentary advocacy

These activities were reinforced by grassroots and parliamentary advocacy. Our grassroots campaigners promoted some of the report’s recommendations on debt when writing to their MPs in November 2024 and to the Chancellor and Foreign Secretary in May 2025. We certainly received some interesting replies from MPs. At the same time, some MPs did not reply, which demonstrates that (unfortunately) it is sometimes necessary to chase one’s elected representatives for a response.

In between these actions, along with our partners Debt Justice, we organised an event, ‘Global Debt Restructuring’, in the UK Parliament in January 2025. The event was inspired by ‘Bad Loans, Poor Nutrition’ and sponsored by Noah Law MP (a member of the International Development Committee). In addition to parliamentarians from both Houses, the event was attended by senior officials from HM Treasury, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) and World Bank, as well as by representatives from a range of civil society organisations. The event took place under the Chatham House Rule, but I can say that Results UK and our allies strongly believe we gave powerful actors much food for thought.

4th International Conference on Financing for Development

I represented Results UK at the 4th International Conference on Financing for Development (known as FFD4) in Sevilla, Spain from 30 June – 3 July. I spoke about the report at a side event on innovative financing and nutrition organised by some of our ACTION partners, the Government of France and the Global Financing Facility. 

In addition, I promoted the report’s recommendations at other debt-related side events, including by making multiple interventions from the floor. In particular, I stressed that the G20’s Common Framework for Debt Treatments is beyond repair, the IMF’s debt sustainability framework needs urgent reform in line with human rights, and debt swaps (agreements where a government replaces debt with liabilities that include spending on a development goal) are highly limited instruments.

While in Sevilla, I was also able to film a video for Bond about what the UK Government needs to do to help create a fair, effective and sustainable sovereign debt system. And I gave a copy of the report to, and discussed the recommendations with, the UK’s Ambassador to the UN Economic and Social Council and FCDO’s Engagement Lead for FFD4.

UK Government response

The FCDO only provided a brief formal response to the report. But through constituency-level advocacy directly reaching the Minister for International Development and the Prime Minister regarding our report’s recommendations, I believe that the UK Government is confused on the principle of comparability of treatment (i.e. all creditors should be treated similarly) and wrongly believes in voluntary rather than mandatory schemes for the disclosure of private sector loans (despite considerable evidence that the former do not work).

More broadly, the UK Government’s approach to debt issues facing the Global South is wholly inadequate at best and actively damaging at worst. For example, the Government is not supporting the important Debt Relief (Developing Countries) Bill (which would help to ensure comparability of treatment). Similarly, the UK actively blocked structural reform of the sovereign debt system during the FFD4 negotiations, preferring to stick with the failed Common Framework, rather than support the creation of mechanisms under the auspices of the UN.

So there is much work still to do. We will continue to work with our allies to advocate that the UK genuinely pursues the cause of debt justice.