It is argued that contracts entered into between sovereign states and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), or international development banks, do not satisfy party autonomy requirements that are otherwise expected in ordinary contracts. Sovereign loan agreements exhibit elements of compulsion, chiefly because of the imminent default, or actual default, of the borrowing state. This ultimately allows lenders and other states in alliance with lenders to impose conditions that are knowingly unconstitutional and injurious to the civil, political and socio-economic rights of the borrower’s population. National courts should, at the very least, view the compulsory contracts in the same manner as ordinary contracts and assimilate the distressed sovereign to a distressed private party entering into a contract with a financial institution that is clearly the stronger of the two parties.