Expertise

Professor Waris’s work spans Advisory, Mediation, Education, and Research — explore each area to learn how she supports governments, builds consensus, teaches, and advances global finance and justice.

Advisory

Guiding governments, civil society, and the private sector globally and nationally.

At the global level, I think the most recent example is my letter to the IMF on charges. I wasn’t alone in this call for a rethink on the implementation of surcharges on countries. It’s not clear why these countries attract charges and not others. The diversity of countries includes Ukraine, which is at war, my own home country Kenya, and also Argentina. These are very different economies, yet for some reason they are all attracting charges, and I’m not clear why.

I wrote to the IMF, and the outcome was that there is now a committee set up at the IMF which meets every year during the Spring Meetings. My letter was also used by the Argentine government to negotiate its interest rates with the IMF in 2023, and it was debated in the El Salvador Parliament.

My letter on the IMF burden has been responded to by the IMF, and I hope they will now be making changes to that process. My letter to BlackRock received a response from Larry Fink, and I await a way forward on the Zameer negotiations, although to date it is not yet complete.

I have also written letters together with other colleagues at the Special Rapporteur’s section on the need to unfreeze the accounts of countries like Afghanistan, to allow them to pay for their UN membership dues. Sanctioned countries remain unable to do so.

I also supported the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights when they developed their resolution on debt and its implications, which was released in 2023.
At the national level, the Government of the Bahamas regularly quotes me in public, most recently during the G77 meeting, where they recommended my policies on debt and climate. The Irish Parliament committee on climate also met me and had discussions with me, including on debt and the different forms of swaps that are used across the world and how they can or cannot benefit climate change.