[Back to index] [To Volume13#2-3 -- full graphics]
From Africa Recovery, Vol.13#2-3 (September 1999), page 16
'Break the chains of debt!'
International Jubilee 2000 campaign demands deeper debt relief
By Carole Collins*
Debt relief for the poorest countries will remain a burning issue, given the meagre results of this year's Group of Seven (G7) summit in Cologne. The proposals announced there on 18 June (see article "Creditors making 'major changes' in debt relief for poor countries") fall far short of the amount of debt cancellation needed, and will bring little change to the lives of ordinary Africans, argues Jubilee 2000, the international coalition of non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Some member groups of the coalition continue to denounce the current framework for debt relief -- the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative -- as a "cruel hoax."
The growing momentum of the global Jubilee 2000 movement to cancel poor country debt -- with national campaigns in over 50 debtor and creditor countries, Jubilee 2000 petitions circulating in over 100, and more than 17 mn signatures collected to date -- helped spur the G7 leaders to move as much as they did. Over 35,000 Jubilee 2000 supporters, many sporting the German Jubilee 2000 campaign's vivid rainbow-hued scarves, lined the roads, bridges and Rhine riverbanks of Cologne, while another 15,000 marched in Stuttgart, to demand that the G7 go even further to "down the debt."
Because 33 of the original HIPC countries were African, Sub-Saharan Africa's debt burden has been a major focus of Jubilee 2000 advocacy for debt relief since the movement emerged in the mid-1990s, inspired by a biblical call to "proclaim Jubilee" and re-establish justice between creditors and debtors by "freeing the captives and cancelling all debt."
Jubilee 2000's political impact has grown dramatically since May 1998, when 50,000 movement supporters formed a 10-kilometre ring around the G7 summit meeting site in Birmingham, UK, to press for more debt relief. Germany -- supported by the US, Japan and Italy -- at that time blocked British proposals, in retrospect fairly modest, for deeper debt relief.
Since then, however, G7 governments and the IMF and World Bank have begun to address more seriously the growing public critique of the HIPC Initiative -- on grounds of poor policy, undemocratic process and meagre results -- as well as to advocate more radical solutions to the debt overhang.
-- In March 1999, representatives of 10 Jubilee 2000 national campaigns met in London with officials of the IMF, World Bank, Paris Club and G7 governments concerning Jubilee 2000's critique of current debt relief programmes.
-- By April, each G7 government had made its own proposal for debt relief for poor countries. Right before its joint spring meetings with the World Bank, the IMF also issued a 65-page review of criticisms of the current HIPC initiative extensively quoting analyses by various Jubilee 2000 national campaigns, Oxfam, and other debt relief proponents.
-- On 19 June, international Jubilee 2000 leaders meeting in Cologne urged G7 leaders to go beyond the Cologne initiative announced the day before. A Jubilee 2000 delegation -- including representatives from the Philippines, Cameroon, Peru, Spain and the US (representing five continents), Irish rock star Bono and Honduran Catholic Archbishop Oscar Rodríguez -- met G7 Chair and German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder to underscore their demands.
-- During July-August, representatives of Jubilee 2000, Eurodad, Oxfam and other NGOs raised the issue of debt cancellation at several conferences. These included a 26 July forum at IMF headquarters, a 29-30 July seminar in Addis Ababa hosted by the UN Economic Commission for Africa and World Bank, and a 2-3 August seminar in London organized by the Commonwealth Secretariat.
Jubilee 2000 advocacy has focused on the G7 governments because, as major creditors, they also collectively control about half of IMF and World Bank assets. Thus they are best placed to pledge new funding, secure changes in Bank and Fund policies to achieve deeper debt relief for more countries and ensure civil society organizations a greater role in debt relief activities.
While focusing on the need to cancel poor country debt, the international Jubilee 2000 movement has also raised other significant debt-related issues, including:
-- ensuring that debt relief is not conditioned on adherence to externally imposed economic policies that increase poverty or environmental destruction;
-- ensuring civil society a role in determining how savings from debt relief are redirected to reduce poverty;
-- the moral right to repudiate "odious debts" accrued by unelected military regimes;
-- developing a more neutral international mechanism placing debtors on a more equal footing with creditors; and
-- recapturing stolen public wealth.
Speaking to global policymakers with one voice has proved challenging, given the differing historical and regional realities of (and within) the global North and South. The global Jubilee 2000 movement has worked hard to develop a shared strategic vision for campaigns in both debtor and creditor countries. This effort is still a work in progress.
The more than 50 national Jubilee 2000 campaigns agree on the need for debt cancellation. Varied national and regional histories, however, have led to somewhat different interpretations. At an April 1998 meeting in Accra, 15 national African campaigns issued a declaration backing total and unconditional debt cancellation as a matter of justice, reparations and restitution. In the January 1999 Declaration of Tegucigalpa, 14 Latin American and Caribbean campaigns, citing the precedents of Peru's 1946 debt renegotiation and Germany's in 1953, urge limiting external debt service obligations to no more than 3 per cent of a nation's annual budget.
Campaigns in different creditor countries have backed these or other levels of debt cancellation. African and other debtor country campaigns have cautioned that Jubilee campaigns in creditor countries, while understandably adapting their strategies to suit political realities at home, must be careful to respect -- and not inadvertently undercut -- South Jubilee negotiating strategies and views.
The global movement has decried the disempowering impact on South campaigns of Northern campaigns' disproportionate share of the global movement's technical skills and resources, mirroring the historic inequality between North and South. During meetings preceding the Cologne summit, South Jubilee campaigns emphasized the importance of strengthening their national campaigns on the ground as well as of South-South exchanges. They emphasized the need for the South to take more of a lead in the global campaign.
Southern Jubilee campaigns hope to achieve greater consensus among themselves at a "South-South" summit in November 1999 in South Africa. By June 1999, coalescing as Jubilee South, they already had adopted a common slogan (displayed on their T-shirts at Cologne): "Don't owe, won't pay!" This reflects their evolving consensus that most developing country debt is "odious debt," lent to dictators and repressive regimes (such as Mobutu Sese Seko, Ferdinand Marcos, the apartheid government or Latin American military juntas) to help preserve their power base or enrich themselves.
It was on this basis that South Africa, in 1995, unconditionally and unilaterally canceled debt owed it by Namibia for loans made during the apartheid era. In early 1999, South Africa also canceled debt owed it by Mozambique after an eloquent appeal to creditors by Mozambican President Joaquim Chissano. A campaign to cancel the apartheid-caused "odious debt" of South Africa and the former Frontline states was publicly launched at a Southern Africa regional meeting of Jubilee 2000 campaigns in Johannesburg in March 1999.
Calls for new national and global policymaking processes on debt that ensure greater participation by civil society representatives are increasingly central to the global Jubilee 2000 movement. The Uganda Debt Network helped develop Uganda's Poverty Action Fund, through which NGOs now work jointly with the Ugandan government to decide how savings from debt relief granted under current HIPC terms will be spent. Oxfam reports that this Fund has helped dramatically improve access to primary education in the past two years. Similar funds proposed by national Jubilee 2000 campaigns in Zambia and Tanzania have won governmental support.
In recent months, Northern campaigns have actively pressed the World Bank, IMF and G7 for earlier and more extensive consultation with civil society in the global South on how best to cancel unpayable debt.
During summer 1999, the global Jubilee 2000 movement intensified calls for deeper debt cancellation and greater efforts to adapt IMF and World Bank programmes and policies to reduce, not worsen, poverty levels. On 6 August Jubilee 2000/UK head Ann Pettifor and Jubilee 2000/USA Chair Jo Marie Griesgraber met with US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers to reinforce these messages. Representatives of various Jubilee 2000 campaigns plan to further underscore them at the annual meetings of the IMF and World Bank on 28-30 September.
Jubilee South campaigns have condemned the Cologne initiative as maintaining the HIPC programme largely as a "scheme of the creditors, by the creditors and for the creditors" inconsistent with the commitment of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development "to halve the levels of absolute poverty by the year 2015." The Cologne proposal, Jubilee South continues, "refuses to acknowledge the moral dimensions of the debt crisis and the historical responsibility of the rich countries for the current state of affairs."
Other Jubilee campaigns also were critical. Father Pete Henriot, a US Catholic priest actively working with the Zambian Jubilee 2000 campaign, has argued that conditions imposed from the outside undercut "the responsibility of decision makers within the country to seek and effectively represent the wishes of their citizens." The "probationary period" imposed on indebted countries by HIPC, he says, is "economically damaging and politically destructive."
The Canadian Ecumenical Jubilee Initiative and CAFOD, an international network of Catholic agencies, feel the Cologne initiative will not write off a sufficient amount of debt. According to the South African Council of Churches, in a June 1999 statement, the initiative "merely polishes -- rather than breaks -- the chains of debt that shackle many countries to perpetual poverty. Worse still, the plan seems likely to strengthen the North's economic stranglehold over the developing world."
Such criticisms also are being taken up by African governments and regional organizations. In July, South African Trade Minister Alec Erwin slammed G7 debt policy as "criminal," adding that if developed countries wanted to help build Southern Africa, they should do so "not by preaching to us about governance, but by taking debt off the books." At end-August, Botswana's President Festus Mogae called on creditor countries to totally cancel Africa's debts, at a conference in Nairobi of ministers and financial experts from 17 African countries specifically organized to discuss solutions to Africa's debt problems.
Southern African Development Community (SADC) Executive Secretary Kaire Mbuende has called on the G7 to cancel Southern Africa's debt of $50-$75 bn. He also criticized G7 plans to finance debt relief partly through IMF gold sales, saying this would generate "unemployment and economic difficulties" in gold-producing nations such as Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania and Zimbabwe, as well as in countries providing labour in their mines. Mr. Mbuende forcefully accused the G7 countries of wanting to maintain the debt, as "a convenient instrument of political control, so you can continue to impose your will on people by continually reminding them how much they owe you and when they have to pay."
[Back to index] [To Volume13#2-3 -- full graphics]
Material from this article may be freely reproduced, with attribution
to "Africa Recovery, United Nations".
We would appreciate a copy of the reproduction.
Africa Recovery
Room S-931
United Nations
New York, NY 10017 USA
Tel: (212) 963-6857
Fax: (212) 963-4556
Email: africa_recovery@un.org
Website: www.africarecovery.org
Contact us by email: africa_recovery@un.org