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Articles by Jerome Phelps
South Sudan ordered to pay Afreximbank $657m by UK High Court - Debt Justice
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE For more information and interviews contact Jerome Phelps on +44 7817 628196 15 May 2025 – South Sudan has been ordered by the High Court in London to pay Afreximbank $657 million over loans for pandemic and infrastructure support[1], as reported by Global Trade Review.[2] This is the equivalent of 47% of South Sudan’s government revenue.[3] According to the court filing, Afreximbank lent $400 million to South Sudan in 2019 for trade-enabling infrastructure.
Jerome Phelps, Author at ZNetwork
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Suriname’s Debt Crisis Shows Us How Global Capitalism Works
Suriname is a former Dutch colony in South America, best known for the pristine Amazon forests that cover 93 percent of the country and make it one of only three countries that absorb more carbon emissions than they produce. It has recently become more interesting to the rest of the world for two main reasons: the fact that it is experiencing one of the world’s worst debt crises, and the discovery of offshore oil and gas in immense quantities.
Debt cancellation – a first step towards reparatory justice - Debt Justice
Debt was on the front page of the Guardian last week, when it was reported that No.10 could take action on debt as part of a programme of ‘reparatory justice’. So what happened and how have lower-income country governments been pressuring the PM to act?
Governments demand banks and hedge funds cancel more of Zambia’s debt
When Zambia reached a deal with its private lenders on 26 October, some celebrated it as the end of three years of stalemate since the country became the first to stop paying its debts during the pandemic in 2020. The Common Framework, the G20’s response to the pandemic-fuelled debt crisis, could work, it was claimed. Yet within days, the deal with private lenders like banks and hedge funds was falling apart.
Zambia’s Debt Crisis
G20 leaders have announced a deal with Zambia as a new debt crisis looms in the Global South. The deal will be another bonanza for finance capital at the expense of the world’s poorest people unless private lenders are forced to take a loss. Zambia has made a deal with its foreign government lenders over its unpayable debt. G20 leaders are declaring a victory for their response to the debt crisis in the Global South.
The Climate Crisis Is Also a Debt Crisis
Countries in the Global South, which are the least responsible for carbon emissions and the climate crisis, are feeling its impacts first and most severely. Climate change is leading to more frequent and intense extreme weather events around the world. Caribbean islands and other Small Island Developing States in particular are responsible for just 0.2% of emissions, yet are being repeatedly devastated by the intensified hurricanes of a hotter world.
Where the west sets
The refugee crisis and the political paralysis around how to tackle it has deeply impacted parts of Greece. ‘Where the west sets’ is a documentary project that attempts to chronicle this unprecedented crisis. In the past few years, governments, institutions, and the media have used the expression “refugee crisis” to describe the rising numbers of undocumented individuals and families fleeing to Europe.
What could a multi-million euro arts festival offer struggling communities in Greece?
On a sunny afternoon in May, a group of Syrian and Iraqi refugees assembled in the grounds of Athens Polytechnic University, dressed in drag. They shook their booties and then stole a piece of art from one of the world’s premiere festivals – a two-metre large replica of the so-called ‘Oath Stone’ at which the trial of Socrates took place more than two millennia ago. The replica had been commissioned for the equally epic European arts exhibition Documenta 14 (D14), which is in Athens until 16 July.
Why is so much art about the ‘refugee crisis’ so bad?
The beach, the pose, seem familiar from the initially shocking, now iconic image of the drowned boy Alan Kurdi. But the dead Syrian toddler is nowhere to be seen. Instead – look! – it’s Ai Weiwei! Ai’s undoubtedly sincere gesture has been much mocked: Jonathan Jones called it a "crass, unthinking selfie". Once again, a celebrity sees a humanitarian crisis and realises that what the world needs is an image of himself.
Invisible fathers of immigration detention
Lou, who I met one windy afternoon last year, knows all too well the devastation that immigration detention can wreak on one’s family. Lou arrived in the UK as an unaccompanied asylum seeking teenager 15 years ago. Vulnerable and orphaned, life was tough. But then Lou met, fell for and moved in with Sam, a British citizen. After a couple of years, they became pregnant. It was an accident but Lou was delighted when their baby girl, Mary, was born.
Humanitarian Corridors: beyond political gesture
Events such as the horrific shipwreck of 3 October 2013 off the coast of Lampedusa are now commonplace in the Mediterranean. With over 6,000 people reported to have been rescued on 3 October 2016, a new approach is long overdue. This is why a programme of safe and legal passage, already underway in Italy, is so important. In pressing for an effective response to deaths at sea, Corridoi Umanitari – humanitarian corridors – appears to provide a new way forward for Europe’s so-called ‘refugee crisis’.
Small, illegal refugee paradise
After hundreds of refugees turned their backs on Idomeni, totally disillusioned due to the closed borders and the evacuated wild camp, many of them headed to the Athenian harbour of Piraeus, favouring a place on the dockside, in the unbearable blazing heat of June within the view of the tourist liners to other places. Frankly, many of us had no other place to go to anyway.
Arresting the mass detention of migrants: ‘Build trust, not walls’
The pragmatic development of alternatives to detention with civil society at the fore can help to arrest the slide into the abyss of mass detention of migrants in Europe. The possible future shape of immigration detention in Europe lies hidden between the lines of the Commission’s proposals for reform of the Common European Asylum System. At first glance, the proposals seem largely to steer clear of detention.
Refugee women in the UK: Pushing a stone into the sea
From personal experience I know that arrival in the UK for asylum seekers does not signal safety, but reform is a ‘chaser game’: refugee women are pressuring the Home Office to improve decision making and end detention, says Beatrice Botomani. In 2012, 6,071 women came to the UK to seek asylum, representing around one third of total applications. Many of these women, like those who came before them, have suffered unimaginable hardship upon arrival in the UK having been stripped of their dignity.
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