The Explosion of Household Debt: Curse or Blessing for Human Rights?

The purpose of this article is to contribute to better understanding 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 financialization being its facilitating instruments; second, the reconfiguration of many human needs for social reproduction that become unmet needs paralleled by a colossal failure of the state to ensure economic, social, and cultural rights for all. This article finds that private debt can be both the cause and consequence of human rights violations. It specifically studies the negative human rights implications of microcredit, health, education, housing-related debts, and abusive collection practices, including the criminalization of debtors, consumer and migration-related debts, and debt bondage.