Discussion of 'Making Sovereign Finance and Human Rights Work,' a recently-published collection that introduces novel legal theories and analyses the links between sovereign debt and human rights from a variety of perspectives. Poor public resource management and the global financial crisis curbing fundamental fiscal space, millions thrown into poverty, and authoritarian regimes running successful criminal campaigns with the help of financial assistance are all phenomena that raise fundamental questions around finance and human rights. They also highlight the urgent need for more systematic and robust legal and economic thinking about sovereign finance and human rights.

The recently published edited collection Making Sovereign Finance and Human Rights Work aims to contribute to filling this gap by introducing novel legal theories and analyses of the links between sovereign debt and human rights from a variety of perspectives. The chapters include studies of financial complicity, UN sanctions, ethics, transitional justice, criminal law, insolvency proceedings, millennium development goals, global financial architecture, corporations, extraterritoriality, state of necessity, sovereign wealth and hedge funds, project financing, state responsibility, international financial institutions, the right to development, UN initiatives, litigation, as well as case studies from Africa, Asia and Latin America. These chapters are then theorised by the editors in an introductory chapter.

This roundtable brings together a number of contributors to the volume to discuss their chapters and engage in an interdisciplinary critique of their work with Oxford scholars from the fields of law, politics, economics and philosophy.