wfn.org | INTERNATIONAL: JUBILEE 2000 CAMPAIGN GAINS MOMENTUM

[Audrey Whitefield <a.whitefield@quest.org.uk>]

Oct. 31, 1997
ANGLICAN COMMUNION NEWS SERVICE
Canon Jim Rosenthal, Director of Communications
Anglican Communion Office
London, England

[97.10.5.1]

INTERNATIONAL: JUBILEE 2000 CAMPAIGN GAINS MOMENTUM
(ENI) An international Church-backed campaign to write off  unpayable
Third World debts in the year 2000 is planning to confront the political
leaders of the world's richest countries with a "vast human chain" when
they arrive in Birmingham, England, for their annual meeting next year
in May.

Supporters of the campaign are expected to arrive in Birmingham by
almost every form of transport imaginable, including balloons and
parachutes.

Organisers of the campaign, Jubilee 2000, say that the chain surrounding
the gathering of leaders of the Group of Seven (G7) of the world's
leading industrialised countries, will not be broken "until the G7 have
acknowledged our message, and accepted hundreds of thousands of our
petitions".

Jubilee 2000, which was launched in Britain in 1996 and is supported by
all of Britain's mainstream Churches and sections of the Jewish
community, is at the centre of a world-wide network that seeks the
cancellation of unpayable debt of the poorest countries on a
case-by-case basis to mark the Millennium Jubilee. Jubilee 2000
estimates that unpayable debt is at least US$100 billion, although the
Roman Catholic development organisation, CAFOD, has put the figure at
US$250 billion.

Since its British launch, Jubilee 2000 campaigns have also been launched
in many other countries, including Ireland, Austria, Germany, Ghana and
Kenya.

The inspiration for the Jubilee campaign comes from the Bible, where
according to the Old Testament (Leviticus 25), the people of Israel
should hold a "jubilee" every 50 years, when land would be restored to
its original owners and slaves set free.

To publicise its goals, Jubilee 2000 is collecting signatures for what
it hopes will be the world's biggest petition - it aims to collect more
than 21 million signatures.

The petition refers to "mistakes made by both lenders and borrowers". It
asks leaders of the lending nations to cancel the backlog of unpayable
debts for the most impoverished countries, and also "to prevent such
high levels of debt building up again".

Jubilee 2000's director, Ann Pettifor, who attended the recent meeting
in Hong Kong of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, told
ENI that Jubilee 2000 was "working closely" with these two institutions,
although both organisations are seen by some observers as being at the
root of the debt crisis affecting a billion people.

"Those who fear dialogue with the IMF and World Bank haven't got
confidence in their own arguments," Ann Pettifor said. The fruit of
dialogue with the lending institutions, she said, was that the debt
campaign was beginning to be treated in earnest, although she pointed
out that there were still differences between Jubilee 2000 and these
institutions: "We differ from them on the amount, timing and conditions
of debt," she said. "We believe in writing off debt. They want to keep
the economic clamps in. We say one can't impose conditions."

She welcomed a recent decision by the central committee of the World
Council of Churches (WCC) to join the call for the cancellation of the
poorest countries' debt by 2000. The WCC is drawing up an action plan
and a statement for adoption at its eighth assembly in December next
year in the Zimbabwean capital of Harare. Ms Pettifor said she was
excited about having an organisation with 330 member Churches working
for the same goal.

"We are a bottom-up movement," she said. "Churches come together around
the idea of writing off debt by the year 2000. In countries where we do
not yet have a coalition, the WCC can make a real difference for us."