S2E6 - IMF & Economic Justice S2E6 - IMF & Economic Justice Layal Beyhum In this episode, Layal speaks with Steven Qi about how economic systems shape dignity, trust, and the possibility of nonviolence. They frame economic justice as a condition for peace rather than a technical policy debate. Steven explains how slowing global growth, rising debt, and labor market shocks translate into everyday precarity. People face unstable jobs, higher living costs, and shrinking opportunities. Trust erodes when institutions fail to protect basic livelihoods, as uncertainty replaces planning, and survival becomes the dominant concern.The conversation grounds macroeconomics in human experience. Steven compares sovereign debt to household credit card debt to show how fragile systems trap both states and people. Countries borrow to survive shocks. Poor terms and weak governance deepen long-term harm. When debt overwhelms capacity, social spending suffers and inequality hardens. Layal pushes the discussion toward responsibility and power. Together, they elaborate on how international financial institutions operate under constraints while navigating corruption, sovereignty, and political pressure. Steven challenges simplistic narratives about the IMF by claiming that global safety nets matter, even when imperfect, because collapse always harms people first.The episode also connects economics directly to nonviolence. Steven explains that stable economies reduce the conditions that produce conflict. Fair fiscal policy, accountable governance, and inclusive labor markets lower the cost of survival. As he put it, violence rises when systems fail to meet basic needs.The conversation closes with agency and hope, as Steven emphasizes community, youth leadership, and participation as long-term pathways to change. Caring sustains people through crisis, and action turns care into power. Economic justice becomes a form of peacebuilding when people stay engaged and refuse to withdraw from one another.About the GuestSteven Qi works as a country analyst in the African Department at the International Monetary Fund, where he supports analytical and research work on IMF country programs. His work focuses on macroeconomic stability, debt, and policy choices that shape everyday life across developing economies.He also serves as a curator of the Global Shapers Community Washington DC Hub, an initiative of the World Economic Forum that brings young professionals together to build leadership, solidarity, and collective action. Through this role, he works closely with youth-led initiatives that bridge policy, community, and global governance.Previously, Steven worked with United Nations agencies including UNFPA, where he focused on strategic communications, stakeholder engagement, and humanitarian affairs. Across institutions and communities, his work centers economic justice, trust, and participation as foundations for peace.Transcript Layal Beyhum (host) 00:05 Hello everyone and welcome to the Nonviolence Now Podcast brought to you by Pace e Bene, where we explore the principles of nonviolence, where it all started, and how it shows up in today's digital world. Hello everybody and welcome to the Nonviolence Now Podcast. It's Layal Beyhum, your host for today, and today we are greeting an exceptional, extraordinary guest and a really good friend of mine, Stephen Qi! Hi Steven, how are you? Steven Qi (guest) 00:37 I'm doing well. So happy to finally be on this platform. I know this is something that we've had in the making for a while now. I'm super happy to be here. Super happy we're making it happen. Layal Beyhum (host) 00:47 Steven is a country analyst in the African Department at the International Monetary Fund, where he provides mission-critical analytical and research support on key IMF country programs. He also serves as a curator of the Global Shapers Community Washington DC Hub, which is an initiative of the World Economic Forum. Previously, Steven worked with various UN agencies such as the UNFPA, where he focused on strategic comms, stakeholder engagement, and humanitarian affairs. Behind the titles, behind your position, who are you? Steven Qi (guest) 01:20 Thank you so much for giving me an opportunity to be actually human, because the bio makes me sound like a type-A over-performing robot, which is a far cry from who I actually am. In reality, I'm half Japanese, half Chinese, really passionate about youth empowerment, because young people like us—young professionals like us—will one day grow up to be the shepherds of our society, of our living planet that we call Earth, in the future. And if we don't start from us, then we cannot break these generational shackles and really, really escape from history repeating itself. So super passionate about youth empowerment. But outside of that, you know, I love to cook, I'm an avid ballroom dancer—try to keep it up since college, but it's becoming a bit difficult. That's required a lot of, a lot of time, a lot of dedication, a lot of practice. Outside of that, I really like playing instruments, playing the piano. It's been hard again, finding time recently just to balance that work and my life. But I do want to get back into it more now that I have a bit more free time because I used to really enjoy experimenting with different types of music and see how to connect my own emotions with music and my own expression. I also like to write poems here and there. Besides from that—this is like really niche, but interior design or anything that's architecturally and artistically related are a passion of mine as well. Layal Beyhum (host) 02:50 I really do hope you find the time to echo and channel the things you enjoy doing, be it expressing through poetry or through dancing or in whichever artistic form that you like. This episode today intends to unfold how economic structures promote peace, dignity, and the capacity for nonviolence. As global growth slows and inequality widens, many communities face worsening precarity, such as rising costs of living, mounting debt, shrinking social safety nets, and lack of dignifiable opportunities. Today we are granted the wonderful and exceptional opportunity to sit with you, Stephen, and unpack how international finance, fiscal choices, and debt policies can either entrench injustice or enable solidarity. And through the particular lens of Campaign Nonviolence’s call to transform systems of violence, we're going to be talking about and touching on how to pursue economic justice as a form of peacebuilding and how can it replace scarcity-driven fear with structures of fairness and participation. But right before we dive into these big concepts and this global narrative, let's start with the basic definitions. Where do we start? Steven Qi (guest) 04:08 I think it's a lot to unpack and I think at first sight it is something that people will say well this will require hours and hours of conversation and perhaps a PhD, I think that's what people think at first sight. But to be honest I think the fundamentals don't need a PhD to unpack. It really is—there is right now, in my opinion, there is a mismatch in the system and the people that it is supposed to serve. I think right now you have a lot of fragility, you have a lot of mistrust, right? Because in the age where people often discuss currencies denominated in each nation's national currency we often forget to discuss the currency that's denominated in trust. I think that in itself is more valuable than any currency in my opinion. But however right now we're lacking severely of that. But if we take it back to a more technical point of view right just like you mentioned globally growth is stalling. People anticipated a bigger rebound after COVID, which we've anticipated, and we saw some of that. However there is also a lot of structural weaknesses that was exposed through COVID that eventually resulted in some countries—especially developing countries—being hit the hardest. That also relates to the debt issues that you see it's being spoken a lot a lot especially in South America, especially in Africa, because during COVID you have a lot of extra budgetary spending that governments need to finance in order to respond to the shocks and that leads to a lot of borrowing. And unfortunately sometimes those borrowings are not done on the best of terms because there's a lot of structural weakness, there's a lot of governance weakness, there's a lot of corruption. Or sometimes if the institution itself is good, there's just a lot of spending that the government doesn't have enough fiscal space for and all that compounds into the years that we have after COVID that creates a very a very sustained but acute debt issue for a lot of countries. So when you have a country that's facing debt issues it's just like a person having a lot of credit card debt, right? Sometimes people tell me, “Oh, you know, this is a country's fiscal health, economic, it feels so high level.” That's how I felt, I saw in the beginning, and then the more I work in this field the more I learned it the more I realized countries are just like humans, you know. It's basically like us taking out credit card debts, too many credit card debts, we can’t repay it, and then we have
