Summary

The purpose of this report is to assist in understanding – and also to unravel, denounce and offer recommendations to tackle – human rights violations in the context of private debt, focusing specifically on individual and household debt offered by a range of lending actors, whether operating in formal or informal settings.

There are two drivers of the rising private indebtedness: first, the flourishing supply side of finance, with deregulation and increasing financialisation being its facilitating instruments; second, the reconfiguration of many human needs for social reproduction that become unmet financial needs paralleled by a colossal failure of the State to ensure economic, social and cultural rights for all.

The Independent Expert studies the negative human rights implications of microcredit, health, education and housing-related debts, abusive collection practices, including the criminalisation of debtors, consumers and migration-related debts, and debt bondage. Private debt can be both a cause and a consequence of human rights violations.