Financing Inequality: How Debt Architecture Undermines the Right to Education -By Fransiscus Nanga Roka

At the center of global economic governance is an enduring myth: that debt, a mere instrument. It is not. Debt is policy. And when channelled through the existing global financial architecture, it is a policy that covertly and progressively attacks one of humankind’s most fundamental human rights: The right to education.

It is not so much that governments of the Global South have run out of political will when it comes to funding education. They are being structurally constrained. Increasing debt burdens, interest rates that punish and fiscal conditionalities imposed by the international financial institutions lead to this brutal arithmetic: creditors first, children second if at all.

This is not mismanagement. It is design.

Public finance is now being devoured by debt servicing itself in many low income countries, often taking up an unimaginably large share of public revenue compared to the budget for education. So finance ministries are caught between a rock and hard place: employ teachers or service debts; build classrooms or stabilize currency markets; subsidise school access, maintain investor confidence. Education is, after all, a thing of the past in this equation.

The result is not abstract. It is quantifiable, observable and destructive. Classrooms overcrowded beyond capacity. Teachers underpaid or absent. Infrastructure crumbling. The millions of children especially girls, those in rural areas and from marginalized communities driven out of school systems that are critically under-resourced. In practice, it is an illusion of a right that are enshrined in international law protected by the veil.

This crisis is, indeed, far more insidious because it has a degree of legitimacy. Not through an outright coercion but by the terms of ‘fiscal discipline’, ‘macroeconomic stability’ and `sustainable development’ These terms sound neutral even responsible. In practice, however, they conceal a clear hierarchy of priorities: financial obligations to creditors prevail at any costs but human rights conventions are merely aspirational.

Not only is this inversion unethical, but it illegal.

International human rights law requires states to progressivly realize the right to education using the “maximum of available resources.” This duty cannot be superseded by lawfully contracted debt repayments. But in reality global finance acts as if it does. Loans by their very nature come with conditionalities, often in the form of requirements to implement austerity measures wage bill ceilings, subsidy cuts and caps on public spending that systematically undermine states ability to invest in education.

It is no accident. It is a systemic contradiction.

The structure of global debt is based on asymmetry. Creditors be they multilateral institutions, private lenders or rich states exist within a system that prioritizes repayment over all else. This stands in contrast to debtor countries which face a shrinking fiscal space, volatile capital flows and limited negotiating power. This yields a system in which financial risk is socialized to the bottom of society, on populations who are least capable of assuming it.

Education becomes collateral damage.

This even worse in that this system is built to pass down the generational wealth, and thus inequality. The consequences for children who are kept out of education is not just a fleeting lossit, leads to permanent harm. These are not byproducts; they are results built into the logic of a system that prioritizes returns over human development, balancing profit and people.

If this was a one off failure it could be rectified. But it is not. It is a pattern repeating across the world.

The painful reality is this: global finance is not just falling short on education rights, but it’s actively inhibiting them. No rhetorical commitment to “inclusive development” or “education for all,” as long this architecture remains intact, will suffice.

Reform, therefore, cannot be cosmetic. It must be structural.

Debt sustainability frameworks need to be recalibrated by incorporating binding human rights thresholds. A country cannot be considered “sustainable” if it is unable to finance basic education. Conditionalities to loans should be assessed, ex-ante and then revocable where it undermines services essential for human rights. Debt restructuring mechanisms need to put social investment above creditor recovery Importantly, the voices of those most affected students, teachers and communities need to be won over in any decisions that will affect their futures.

Anything less is complicity.

That is not a neutral system; having governments face the choice between educating their children or servicing external debt. It is a system that funds inequality.

And let’s face it: when we pursue education at the cost of debt, our payment isn’t only financial; it’s moral.

A world that asserts a stronger property claim to financial contracts than it claims the future of children is more broken by far.

It is unjust by design.

Fransiscus Nanga Roka

Faculty of Law University 17 August 1945 Surabaya Indonesia