While the Paris Club deal has been widely debated in Iraq, the reaction around the world has been equally strong. In Africa, nearly half of all international aid goes toward the repayment of debts—many of which were incurred under undemocratic, repressive regimes. In Nigeria, which was ruled until recently by a military dictatorship, the financial picture is especially stark. Abraham Nwankwo, director of the country’s Debt Management Office, says it has paid $42 billion to the Paris Club over the past thirty-eight years, to service a debt of $13.5 billion. As a result of compound interest, the country still owes $25 billion, a situation Nwankwo calls an “endless cycle of debt burden.” In March, the Nigerian House of Representatives called for debt relief of its own, specifically citing the Iraqi precedent. Sachs thinks they have a point. “James Baker got a deal for Iraq in thirty days,” he says. “Yet Nigeria, which is a struggling democracy much poorer than Iraq, with only a fifth of Iraq’s oil reserves, is told, ‘Sorry, you’re an oil country; you’ll have to wait.’ The lack of consistency is striking.”

The Iraqi case is also generating waves beyond Africa. Last March, Argentina, effectively bankrupt and still wrestling with the bill left by its former military regime, renegotiated its $103-billion debt, forcing international bondholders to accept about thirty cents on the dollar. Even though Argentina has a history of fiscal mismanagement, politicians there suggested that the Iraqi debt rollback meant their debts should be reduced even further. Mario Cafiero, a member of the Argentine parliament, argued that most of that debt was “contracted by a despotic regime, not to satisfy the needs of the nation, but to strengthen itself and repress people who fight against it.”

In each of these countries, debts amassed by dictators—whose human rights abuses could hardly have been a secret to Western lenders—are widely seen as illegitimate. According to Adams, politicians and debt managers in many more countries have been emboldened by the case of Iraq. She thinks the Philippines, where politicians have called for debt repudiation of their own, will be next. Filipino Senator Manuel Villar recently suggested that the Argentinian example could apply to his own country, which incurred much of its debt under the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos. Villar said that Argentina was able to reduce its debt to 28 percent of $103 billion; a similar dip would no doubt ease the pressure on the Philippines’ own $55-billion burden. “Iraq was a watershed,” Adams says. “People in many countries are starting to see that the threat of forcing legal arbitration on Western creditors can shame them into dropping these odious debts. It’s a very important moment.”

Still, it may be some time before the developing world’s debt wall comes down. After last December’s tsunami devastated a number of deeply indebted South Asian nations, Western leaders offered a one-year freeze on Paris Club debt payments totalling $5 billion. But the gesture was not as generous as it may seem: additional interest will still be charged for the delay period. That doesn’t surprise Pettifor. “The United States and the rest of the wealthy nations invoked a moral case for debt reduction in Iraq,” she says. “But the rest of the countries with odious debts are expected to keep paying. It’s a blatant double standard.”