Campaign to drop the debt
Campaigners have been working for a long time to ask rich countries, and the IMF and World Bank, to cancel the money owed to them. In the run up to the new millennium a powerful new campaign was created called Jubilee 2000. It called for a debt free start to the new millennium, and succeeded in putting debt cancellation at the top of the international agenda. Some debt relief was promised, but it did not go far enough.
The campaigning has continued. Campaigners want unpayable poor country debt to be cancelled fully, quickly and without conditions, as a matter of justice. These are some of the demands they are making:
- Full cancellation: there must be irreversible 100% cancellation of unpayable debts for all countries that need it, by fair and transparent means. This must include all multilateral, bilateral and private debts.
- New money: rich countries must fund this cancellation not from existing aid budgets, but by providing new money.
- An end to harmful economic conditions: the World Bank and IMF must stop attaching harmful conditions to debt relief (such as privatisation of basic services or cuts in public spending).
- Accountability: the governments of indebted countries must demonstrate to their citizens that they are spending released money well and accountably.
- Cancellation now: cancellation needs to happen quickly. Many countries have already demonstrated what a difference debt cancellation can make in tackling poverty.
- A fair, open arbitration process: in the long term, we need a transparent, impartial international process to resolve debt crises and ensure that human needs take priority over debt repayments, protecting expenditure on public services.
- Grants not loans: to avoid another debt crisis like the current one, poor countries should be given more grants, rather than have their debt burden piled higher with more loans.
Click here to find out how you can get involved in the campaign for debt cancellation.