The Financing for Development Office of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (FfDO/UNDESA) and The Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) are jointly convening a Panel Discussion on Facilitating International Adjustment through Timely Debt Resolution. The Panel will take place in Tokyo on 12 October 2012, at the margins of the 2012 Tokyo Annual Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank Group.

The Panel will explore the calculus of economic and political factors influencing debt default decisions to assess the extent to which voluntary or statutory rules-based approaches can contribute to an orderly and timely framework for the restructuring of claims that reduces costs to debtors and private creditors alike. Key questions are whether steps can be taken to improve upon the prevailing ad hoc, voluntary approach that has dominated the restructuring of sovereign debt over the past decade, or whether a more formal system for dealing with situations of fundamentally unsustainable debts is needed.