© Anglican Religious Communities 1998
Many of the children born in the poorer countries of the world are inevitably trapped in poverty from the
moment of birth. It is a poverty perpetuated by debts which can never be paid off, debts owed by these poorer countries
to the West. This burden is therefore being maintained in our name. A campaign called Jubilee 2000 proposes
we celebrate the new millennium by cancelling the unrepayable debts, so offering hope for both creditor and debtor.
In this article, Sister Emma, a novice from Tymawr Convent in Wales, looks at the Jubilee 2000 campaign
and the reasons to support it.
Many Anglican Religious Communities began as pioneers in social reform. From their beginnings in the nineteenth
century, there was a passion for justice, which fired their prayer and work in prisons, hospitals, schools and
among the poor in our cities. Today our world, including parts of the UK, still has a desperate need for our prayers
and action. Many Anglican communities are praying and working for the Jubilee 2000 proposals, alongside their brothers
and sisters in other churches.
So what is Jubilee 2000? It is a campaign whose concern is that billions of people in the world’s poorest countries
are enslaved by debts, which were caused by governments on their behalf. These debts started as easy credit pushed
by rich lenders, but now the poor will never be able to repay them. The debts serve to enrich lenders, but leave
children malnourished and their families destitute. Jubilee 2000 is campaigning to celebrate the new millennium
by lifting this burden of unrepayable debt from the poorest countries.
Jubilee 2000 describes itself as an educational organisation allied to a campaign. It is not a fund-raising
movement. The Jubilee Proposal is:
a one-off cancellation by the year 2000
of the backlog of unrepayable debt
owed by the poorest countries
on a case by case basis.
To achieve this, Jubilee 2000 aims to work at three different levels:
Firstly: to build up a membership of concerned, informed members in the UK and abroad; secondly, to engage in discussion
on the debt issue with economists, politicians and decision-makers; thirdly, as the millennium approaches, to use
a huge media campaign in 1998-1999 to bring pressure upon world leaders to make the necessary changes. But what
can we do?
Be Informed
The debt situation arose in the 1970s, when Western banks needed to lend their large reserves of money to
avoid an international financial crisis. Huge sums were lent to Third World countries, whose economies were then
doing well, but who needed money to maintain development and meet the rising costs of oil. The debts then spiralled
out of control because of two factors. First, interest rates rose massively, so debt repayments increased dramatically.
Second, the prices of primary products went down on average by 30% because too many countries, advised by the West,
were producing the same crops. Therefore, Third World incomes plunged. The poorest countries in the world were
earning less but having to pay much more. In 1982, Mexico told its creditors that it could not repay its debts.
By the 1980s, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund had become involved in re-scheduling debts
and in providing new loans under strict conditions to help pay the interest. The conditions take the form of Structural
Adjustment Programmes (SAPs), which tie the governments of debtor countries to very strict economic programmes.
The imposed conditions aimed to help a country pay its debts by earning more hard currency, by increasing exports
and decreasing imports. However, in all countries applying SAPs, the poor have been hit the hardest, because these
programmes usually include:
1. Spending less on health, social services and education, so that only those who can pay have access to them.
Africa now spends four times as much on its loans than on health care. Over 500,000 children die each year as a
consequence of the cutbacks in health services.
2. Devaluing the national currency, lowering export earnings and increasing import costs.
3. Cutting back on food subsidies, which can sometimes entail the prices of essential goods soaring in a matter
of days.
4. Cutting jobs and wages for workers in government industries and services.
5. Encouraging privatisation of public industries, including selling to foreign investors.
6. Taking over subsistence farms growing staple foods to create large-scale export crop farms. Consequently, farmers
are left with no land on which to grow their food, and few of them are employed on the large farms.
The debt crisis is clearly a disaster for the people who live in Third World debtor countries. Each year these
countries pay the West three times more in debt repayments than they receive in aid. Zambia was once one of the
richest countries in Africa. Today, every Zambian citizen owes the country’s creditors over £565, more than
three times the average annual salary. The results of international debt, however, also ‘boomerang’ back to hurt
the rich countries of the First World. In her book The Debt Boomerang, Susan George lists six areas in which
the debt crisis affects the creditor countries as much as the debtors.
1 Killing the environment
Brazil is one of the largest debtors, owing US$112 billion. It is also the world’s largest deforester, cutting
a staggering 50,000 square kilometres of forest each year. The forests are chopped down by loggers, developers
and farmers, as well as by ordinary people pushed off the land by large development projects.
2 Lost jobs and markets
Debt means poor countries can not afford imports. This helps cause global recession and a rise in Western unemployment.
It is also cheaper to import Third World goods, which equally has an effect on factory and farm output – and therefore
jobs – in the West. One key recommendation of Structural Adjustment Programmes is privatisation. This means multinational
companies can set up in poorer countries, where they can pay lower wages and where laws about working hours and
conditions are often less strict. The company can therefore make a bigger profit from the Third World, where workers
are forced to accept bad working conditions, than maintaining jobs in Western countries.
3 Fuelling the drugs trade
Almost all the major drug-producing countries also have high international debts. To repay debts, they need
hard currency from the sale of commodities, like cocoa, whose value has been falling. Meanwhile, cocaine prices
have been rising, so countries turn to the drugs trade to raise foreign currency and to survive. For example, 40%
of Bolivia’s work-force depend on the drugs trade for a living.
4 Bailing out the banks
The four main High Street banks in the UK – Lloyds, NatWest, Midland and Barclays – have all been involved
in lending to the Third World. For these banks, however, the worst of the crisis is over. All of them have sold
off large portions of their debt by one means or another. Lloyds, Midland and Barclays have all made substantial
profits from selling, exchanging and making provision for Third World debts.
5 Immigration
There are about 100 million legal and illegal immigrants and refugees today. Most of them are in the countries
of the Third World but an increasing number are arriving in the West. The desire to migrate will not change, no
matter how many laws are created to prevent immigration, unless conditions in the sending countries improve so
that people can make an adequate living and support their families. Reducing the debt burden would enable poorer
countries to improve living conditions and so keep their active workforce rather than losing them through immigration.
6 Conflict and war
Britain uses export credits to subsidise arms sales to the South. In 1993-4, 50% of all export credits provided
by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) to exporters were for arms sales. In time, these credits became debts
for poorer countries. 96% of the debts owed to Britain by poor countries are owed to the Export Credit Department
of the DTI. Debt can also lead and contribute to war. As countries become poorer, one reaction is violence and
protest among their people. Escalation of this can end in war. As governments then respond by spending more on
armaments, they have even fewer resources left to relieve poverty. So the cycle of war and debt continues.
Sign the Petition
Jubilee 2000 are circulating a petition for signature by millions of people around the world, to become a global
plea for a new debt-free start for a billion people. It will be submitted to the leaders of the richest countries,
as the world’s biggest creditors, at the G7 summit in 1999. Copies of the petition can be obtained from the Jubilee
2000 office, at the address at the end of this article.
Work to spread the word
Write to your local MP, your MEP and the Managing Director of the IMF (Mr Michel Camdessus, International Monetary
Fund, H Street NW, Washington DC 20009, USA) about the Jubilee proposal. Write and ask your bank about their policies
on debt. If you are not satisfied with the response, consider depositing your money with The Co-operative Bank
or Friends Provident, both of which are committed to ethical investment and have no involvement with
Third World debt.
Consider using fairly-traded products where possible. For example, Café Direct is a fair-traded coffee which
gives the farmer more direct benefit. Organisations such as Traidcraft and Oxfam offer an increasing range of such
goods. Religious Communities, offering hospitality to many visitors and guests, can play a rôle in witnessing
on the debt issue simply through their shopping policies.
Jubilee 2000 has published an excellent book The Debt Cutter’s Handbook, on which much of this
article is based. It contains a fuller description of the background and present realities of the debt crisis,
and also ideas for individual action and group discussion. Some pages can be made into posters. The book also includes
material for biblical reflection, meditations and prayers, and an excellent article by Roger Forster, looking at
a biblical response to the situation. It can be obtained from:
Jubilee 2000, PO Box 100, London SE1 7RT
Tel: 0171 401 9999; Fax: 0171 401 3999; E-Mail: j2000c@gn.apc.org
One of the closest parallels to the debt crisis is the Atlantic slave trade. It too was a system of international
oppression accepted for centuries as a normal and necessary part of trade and life. Influential people like William
Wilberforce took up the cause, but it needed the agreement and support of thousands of ordinary people to ensure
the abolition of the slave trade.
There are people in positions of power in both North and South who are eager to see a fairer world with debts
cancelled. However, the support of thousands of people in the North is needed to bring pressure on decision-makers
into implementing basic change. It is an opportunity for Christians to work in partnership with others throughout
the world. It is an opportunity for Anglican Religious Communities to support such work with prayer and action.
It is an opportunity not to be missed, because, in the words of Bishop Rowan Williams, we shall be a ‘smaller,
shabbier, more unholy people if we are complicit in debt’.