Reflections on Senegal’s Debt Crisis and Preserving Our Capacity to Choose
More than thirty years ago, in the course of my work in the field of human rights, I was already reflecting on the relationship between debt, the policies of international financial institutions, and the effective enjoyment of economic and social rights. That reflection also informed my efforts to ensure that corruption and the fraudulent enrichment of public officials were considered in light of their consequences for the rights of populations.
In October 2004, in a paper entitled A Human Rights-Based Approach to the Fight against Poverty, I defended a conviction that seems to me just as relevant today: economic policies cannot be judged solely by the financial balances they restore; they must also be judged by their consequences for the human person. I called on States and international financial institutions to account for the effects of their policies on the most vulnerable sectors of society. I also questioned IMF policies when the pursuit of accounting balances risked relegating human needs and development strategies to a secondary concern.
More than twenty years later, the world has changed, Senegal has changed, and the international financial institutions themselves have evolved. It would be unfair not to acknowledge this. Yet a fundamental question remains: can an economic policy be considered fully successful if it restores financial balance while durably reducing a State’s capacity to guarantee the fundamental rights of its population and pursue its development? That question has acquired particular resonance in Senegal today.
I am neither an economist nor a public finance specialist. I therefore do not intend to enter into the technical parameters of the debt or the precise modalities of its treatment. My concern comes from the law, from human rights, and from a conviction I expressed as early as 2004: “The economy must serve the human person, not the other way around.” It is from this starting point that I wish to consider Senegal’s current debt crisis.
Public debt is never only a matter of figures, repayment dates or market confidence. Behind the figures are schools, health facilities, jobs, social policies and vulnerable people who must be protected. Behind the borrowing undertaken today are also citizens who will have to bear its consequences tomorrow. Debt therefore inevitably intersects with human rights. This does not mean that a high level of indebtedness is, in itself, a human rights violation.
Borrowing can, on the contrary, be an indispensable instrument of development. The real questions concern the conditions under which debt is incurred, its purpose, its transparency and its consequences. Specialists will tell us whether a debt can be repaid and under what terms. The law and human rights compel us to ask other questions: at what cost? Who will bear that cost? Which rights may be affected? And how much freedom to choose will we leave to those who come after us? This question naturally brings me back to the right to development.
Towards the end of the 1980s, Papa Demba Thiam invited me, while he was teaching at the University of Neuchâtel, to discuss the right to development with his students. Nearly forty years later, his contributions to the current debate on Senegal’s debt give that earlier dialogue a particular resonance. They remind us of an obvious truth that a financial crisis can easily cause us to forget: a country does not stop living while its debt is being negotiated. Sovereignty is not merely the right to decide. It also entails mastering the commitments made in the name of the nation, respecting the rules governing how those commitments are undertaken, and accounting for them to citizens. But financial credibility cannot exhaust the issue.
A country is not a sovereign bond. A nation is not governed for the sole purpose of securing a better credit rating. Nor can it be placed on hold until its creditors have completed negotiations over its debt. A nation is first and foremost a human community. Women and men work there, raise their children there and hope for a better life. Young people await opportunities. Citizens are entitled to expect their institutions not only to manage the constraints of the present but also to prepare for the future. That is why the right to development must remain our compass.
Sovereignty is often understood as the freedom to decide without outside interference. That dimension remains essential. But it is not sufficient. Borrowing is an act of sovereignty. Accounting for that borrowing is a requirement of responsible sovereignty. Debt commits the resources of the community. It may survive for decades beyond the government that incurred it, constrain the choices of those who follow, and transfer to citizens who played no part in the original decision the cost of choices made in their name.
That is why public commitments that escaped ordinary mechanisms of transparency and oversight raise more than an accounting issue. They raise questions of the rule of law and democratic accountability. Who had the authority to commit the nation financially? Under what procedures? With what information provided to Parliament and oversight institutions? Who knew? Who should have known? Which mechanisms failed, and why? These questions belong neither to the governing majority nor to the opposition. They belong to the Republic.
Our first demand for accountability must therefore begin at home. No criticism of the IMF, creditors or markets can absolve us of the duty to establish the truth about the conditions under which our own financial sovereignty was exercised. This does not mean that every requirement of accountability ends at Senegal’s borders. International financial institutions exercise considerable influence. They assess, advise and monitor. Their analyses can profoundly affect a country’s circumstances and the choices available to it. It is therefore legitimate to ask how significant irregularities in public accounts could have escaped surveillance mechanisms for several years. But rigour is essential.
A failure of surveillance, even if established, is not in itself sufficient to demonstrate international legal responsibility, much less complicity. Such a legal characterisation would require precise evidence. Between legal responsibility and the absence of any responsibility, however, lies an essential space: that of institutional accountability. An institution endowed with such influence must be able to explain the limits of its action, draw lessons from possible failures and improve its mechanisms. But the responsibility of one actor cannot be used to erase that of another. The aim, therefore, is not to search for scapegoats. It is to establish a culture of responsibility in which each actor — national authorities, oversight institutions and international partners — accepts accountability for what properly falls within its sphere.
A crisis of this nature first requires truth. Truth about the commitments undertaken. Truth about the procedures followed or circumvented. Truth about the oversight mechanisms that worked or failed. And, finally, truth about any responsibilities that may arise. Transparency is not a concession to creditors. It is first and foremost a right of citizens. When a public decision commits a nation’s resources for years to come, those in whose name that decision is taken must be able to know, understand and demand accountability.
This is where the rule of law assumes its full meaning. It means that the exercise of power — including the power to commit the State financially — remains subject to rules, oversight and the obligation to account. Yet truth about the past must not become a prison for the present. Establishing responsibility is necessary. Governing also requires protecting those who live today and preparing the future of those who will come tomorrow. Restoring necessary balances cannot mean imposing a disproportionate share of the burden on those who already have the least. This is precisely where a human rights-based approach becomes essential.
It requires us to look beyond the figures and ask: who will bear the sacrifices being demanded? Which families will feel their effects? Which public services risk being weakened? What will happen to young people seeking employment, to workers whose livelihoods are threatened, and to small businesses on which the survival of many families depends? The rights to education, health, social protection and dignified living conditions cannot become mere adjustment variables. But protecting the present does not mean only cushioning the social consequences of the crisis. It also means refusing to put development on hold while waiting for better days. Society continues to live while its experts negotiate. Children must continue going to school. The sick must receive care. Young people enter the labour market every day. Businesses may disappear. Families may fall into hardship. Opportunities lost today may never be recovered.
Economic time is also human time. As discussions with financial institutions and creditors intensify, there is a risk that our collective attention will focus almost exclusively on the debt: its amount, its treatment and its repayment. Yet debt has its deadlines; human dignity has its urgencies. A child who needs schooling cannot wait for the end of a financial negotiation. A patient in need of care cannot wait for fiscal balance to be restored. An unemployed young person cannot indefinitely postpone entering working life. A family that falls into poverty may not recover tomorrow what it loses today.
The success of any exit from the crisis therefore cannot be measured solely by the restoration of financial credibility. It must also be measured by our capacity to endure this ordeal without sacrificing human dignity, deepening inequalities or undermining the right to development. We must not make debt more sustainable by making development less possible.
Responsibility ultimately looks to the future. Public debt is also a decision taken today over a portion of the resources that will be available to those who come after us. It therefore affects, to some extent, their freedom. Restoring balance is indispensable. No State can indefinitely disregard commitments legitimately undertaken in its name or base its development on uncontrolled indebtedness. But financial balance cannot be the sole measure of a successful exit from crisis.
Debt should not be assessed only by the State’s ability to honour its financial commitments. It should also be assessed by the capacity the State retains to discharge its responsibilities towards its population and to preserve, for future generations, a meaningful margin of sovereign choice. The sovereignty at issue here is not an abstraction. It is measured by the real capacity of a people to determine its priorities, educate its children, care for its population, offer prospects to its youth, and pass on to future generations a country whose essential choices have not already been made on their behalf.
Sovereignty as responsibility means neither evading one’s commitments nor accepting that their fulfilment should deprive a people of the means to build its future. We must therefore hold together what the pressures of crisis may tempt us to set against each other: our obligations to creditors and our obligations to citizens; the necessities of the present and the rights of future generations; respect for commitments and the preservation of human dignity.
Senegal’s entry into the oil and gas era adds a particular dimension to this reflection These resources can make a powerful contribution to national development. They can also foster the illusion that tomorrow’s wealth will always be able to repair today’s imbalances. Growth driven by hydrocarbons cannot, by itself, be equated with the development of a society. Development must also be measured by what wealth actually changes in people’s lives.
Our sovereignty over these resources will therefore be measured by what they change in the lives of Senegalese people: the education provided to a child, the healthcare available to a family, the opportunities opened to a young person, the jobs created, the infrastructure passed on, and the inequalities reduced. It will also be measured by the transparency with which decisions are taken and by what we succeed in preserving for those who come after us. Natural resources belong to the present, but they also engage the future.
Senegal must regain the confidence of its partners, creditors and investors. That confidence is necessary. But it cannot substitute indefinitely for another and more fundamental form of confidence: the confidence of citizens in their own institutions. A debt policy would not be fully responsible if it restored the confidence of creditors at the cost of breaking the bond of trust between the State and its citizens.
The exit from the crisis should therefore become an opportunity to renew our public governance: better information for Parliament and citizens; transparency regarding commitments undertaken in the name of the State; effective strengthening of oversight institutions; vigilance in the management of natural resources; and clearer lines of responsibility whenever the nation is committed for decades. One principle should now prevail: No government should be able to commit the nation’s financial sovereignty for the long term without being required to account fully for doing so. This principle belongs neither to a government nor to its opposition. It belongs to the rule of law.
More than twenty years ago, I concluded my reflection on poverty and human rights with this conviction: “The economy must serve the human person, not the other way around.” I believe no differently today. The question, therefore, is not whether we must choose between honouring our commitments and protecting our sovereignty. Responsible sovereignty requires us precisely to uphold both.
What would be the purpose of restoring the State’s solvency if, in doing so, we durably undermined its capacity to perform the functions for which it exists? But what sovereignty would we preserve if opaque commitments or the loss of our credibility gradually deprived us of any real capacity to decide?
True sovereignty does not consist in being able to say no to the IMF. Nor does it consist in satisfying the markets. It lies in the capacity of a people, through institutions governed by the rule of law, to know the commitments undertaken in its name, to scrutinise their legality, transparency and purpose, to require those who exercise power to account for them, and to preserve, despite the constraints of the present, its freedom to choose its future. This is where, in my view, human dignity, human rights, the right to development and sovereignty as responsibility converge.
The purpose of emerging from the debt crisis should therefore not be merely to make Senegal solvent again. It should enable us to establish the truth about the past, protect human dignity in the present, and preserve the freedom of choice of future generations. For ultimately, the essential question is not only what debt we will leave to our children. It is also — and perhaps above all — what Senegal we will leave them.
