As the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank hold their annual meetings, and many Ministers of Finance meet, billions of people across all global regions increasingly remain caught in the tightening grip of polycrisis, ever-growing in breadth and scale. Much of the harm traces back to the policy prescriptions of these leading international institutions, who in their 81st year continue to leave a trail of devastation and human rights violations in their wake. 

Especially for peoples of the Global South, heavily weighed down by unprecedented and illegitimate public debt burdens in the context of an intensifying climate crisis, profound changes in the international economic and financial architecture are key to their survival and to building a just, rights-based, sustainable and people-centered future.