Across 121 low-, lower-middle- and upper-middle-income countries, our new interactive simulation — drawing on debt-service data from Debt Justice — gives the answer in concrete terms: the numbers of additional people, children and outcomes that public spending would reach.
External debt service diverts public spending on health, education, water, sanitation and social security, it constrains a state’s progressive realisation of those rights. Quantifying that constraint — country by country, year by year — is the contribution we hope to make.
For each of the 121 countries, the tool offers a complete profile across health, education, basic services and social protection, including the share of currently unmet need that fiscal space could close. Country advocates can link directly to their country’s findings, copy a shareable URL, and download a one-page PDF brief from any country profile — designed for submissions to UN treaty bodies, ministry briefings, civil-society campaigns and parliamentary questions
The simulation used the GRADE tool for a single counterfactual: what would happen if there was full cancellation of external public and publicly-guaranteed debt service.
For policymakers and creditors negotiating restructurings, and civil-society organisations holding governments and international financial institutions accountable, the tool makes visible what is ordinarily abstract — that debt service is not just a budget line, but a quantifiable constraint on the rights of children and mothers in the countries least equipped to bear it.