A piece of the international financial architecture is missing, one that would facilitate more effective, fair and timely sovereign debt workouts than the ad hoc, inconsistent and sometimes highly political processes that are applied today. While a newly created mechanism should be available to any sovereign government, including in Europe, special concerns have been voiced, as in the convoking of this conference, for improving debt workouts in low and middle-income countries, where crisis-related declines in living standards that are part and parcel of sovereign debt crises are hardest to bear. The desirability of having such a mechanism was globally agreed by heads of state and their finance and foreign ministers at the Monterrey Summit on Financing for Development in 2002, and serious discussions about creating such a mechanism took place at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 2002-3, albeit without reaching agreement. It was not the first time that the matter was addressed internationally. Efforts were made to create international debt workout mechanisms in 1907 (Hague Convention), 1933 (Montevideo Pan American Conference), 1942 (early stages of Bretton Woods), 1978 (UNCTAD agreed guidelines), 1996 (HIPC for poorest countries), as well as the IMF initiative in 2002-3 (SDRM). If a permanent global instrument has not yet been created, can it still happen? Yes, global institutional changes do happen, albeit only when the conditions are ripe. This paper argues that launching an initiative at this time would be opportune.