wfn.org | Jubilee 2000 will disband as planned, but its work will continue

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Note #6298 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

12-December-2000
00442

Jubilee 2000 will disband as planned, but its work will continue

Debt relief for poorer countries tops $100 billion

by Cedric Pulford
Ecumenical News International

LONDON -- The Jubilee 2000 coalition, set up to free the world's poor
countries of unpayable debt and described by British social commentator
Polly Toynbee as "the most brilliantly successful campaign of our times,"
will wind up in Britain at the end of this jubilee year, but its work is to
continue in other forms.

	Relief agencies including Christian Aid, CAFOD (Roman Catholic), Oxfam,
Tearfund, War on Want and the World Development Movement have pledged
support for the coalition's ongoing activities.

	Jubilee 2000 was launched in the UK in 1996 with the aim of cancelling the
unpayable debts of the poorest countries by the year 2000. Churches are
amongst its strongest supporters. In just four years it has become a huge
and powerful international movement, forcing the debt issue to the top of
the international economic agenda.

	There are now Jubilee 2000 networks in more than 60 countries and more than
20 million people have signed a petition calling for the debt burden on
developing world countries to be eased.

	Yet in terms of hard cash, progress has been slower than hoped for, and
Jubilee 2000 UK admitted on Dec. 2 that only about a third of the $300
billion that needs to be written off has so
far been scheduled for cancellation by creditor nations and multilateral
lending agencies like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

	Twenty countries have had some debt relief, but may still end up spending
more on debt servicing than on health or education, Jubilee 2000 pointed
out. After receiving debt relief, Tanzania, for example, still spends $168
million a year on debt, compared with $87 million on health and $154 million
on education. One Tanzanian child in seven dies before his or her fifth
birthday, more than a quarter of adults are illiterate and more than 10
million people have no access to safe water.

	Ann Pettifor, director of Jubilee 2000 UK, said that the campaign had
brought about a world-wide change of attitudes: "Debt cancellation is no
longer viewed as an issue of charity,
but as one of justice. It has given millions of people the competence and
confidence to challenge elites in both the north and the south. The world
will never be the same again."

	From next year she will head Jubilee Plus, a long-term global support unit
for campaigns on international debt and finance. Her deputy, Adrian Lovett,
will lead Drop the Debt, a short-term initiative focused on the Genoa summit
next July of the Group of Eight (the leading Western industrialised nations
plus Russia).

	Lovett said: "We've got a fantastic campaign in Italy, we've got the Pope
on our side, and it's now clear that debt cancellation efforts so far are
simply not enough. The stage is set for a breakthrough in 2001."

	More than 70 leading aid agencies and rights groups have joined forces with
One World -- an Internet site (www.oneworld.org) devoted to human rights and
sustainable development -- to mark the end of the Jubilee 2000 campaign by
launching a global Internet portal linking campaigns and actions related to
debt. DebtChannel.org (www.debtchannel.org) is intended to bring together
stories and information from around the world to form "the most
comprehensive collection of material on debt on the entire web."

	The portal is edited at OneWorld Africa in Zambia -- one of the countries
carrying a devastating debt burden. As well as providing content from
organizations based in both the North and the South, the portal will promote
voices from the South, "creating a space for them to tell of their
experience of this issue and what should be done to address it."

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