Debt Cancellation News from the G-7 Summit

G7 open door to 100% debt cancellation - but don't deliver yet

However, the communique did not commit to any specific actions, or offer any new money for debt cancellation. Nor did it address the crucial issue of the strings often attached to debt relief. Jubilee Debt Campaign and other organisations are demanding that creditors must stop making debt cancellation conditional on impoverished countries implementing economic policy reforms - such as enforced privatisations or cuts in public spending, which can harm the populations of poor countries as much as the original debts.

As the Finance Ministers met for dinner before their meeting, Jubilee Debt Campaign presented them with over 8,000 postcards and emails demanding that they Wipe Out Debt - just a sample of at least 30,000 messages that had been sent to Gordon Brown and the other ministers in the last few weeks before the meeting. World Development Movement, a member of the Jubilee Debt Campaign coalition, also set up a counter outside the meeting to show how many children died because of preventable poverty while the ministers were talking: one every three seconds, or more than 26,000 during the course of the meeting.

Jubilee Debt Campaign welcomes the fact that the G7 has finally accepted the arguments of debt campaigners around the world, that some countries need and deserve 100% debt cancellation. We are now intensifying our efforts in the next few months to make clear that the world now expects them actually to deliver 100% debt cancellation, without harmful strings attached and without raiding aid budgets to do it.

Mr. Brown's proposal that the G-7 turned down, included:

• 100% multilateral debt cancellation for countries which have already completed the Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) initiative, as well as for a number of other poor countries;
  
• use of IMF gold reserves to fund 100% cancellation of the debts these countries are paying to the IMF;
  
• creditor governments to provide extra money to fund 100% cancellation of the debts these countries are paying to the World Bank and African Development Bank;
  
• this cancellation to cover all debt payments until ‘at least’ 2015.

The UK government made a similar announcement on 26 September 2004. These two announcements are a tribute to the efforts of debt campaigners over many years. The UK announcement followed Jubilee Debt Campaign's Call for Change campaign, in which 20,000 activists sent cards to the UK Treasury demanding cancellation of the UK's share of multilateral debts. The Canadian announcement came only two weeks after campaigners targeted its embassies in more than 20 countries worldwide as part of an international day of action focused on the G7.

Whilst welcoming the initiative shown by the UK and Canada, debt campaigners are concerned that unless cancellation is delivered without harmful economic policy conditions, it may undermine the potential benefit of debt relief. They are also calling for permanent cancellation of debt stocks, rather than the ten-year suspension of debt repayments currently being offered by the UK and Canada.

JDC Campaign’s Officer Caroline Pearce said today, “Worldwide, expectation is growing that the world’s richest countries will act decisively in 2005 to combat the man-made disaster of poverty which kills 30,000 children every day. The forthcoming G7 Finance Ministers is the first test of the rich world’s rhetoric that it cares about poverty and justice. Unless they take radical action this weekend and cancel irrevocably 100% of the debts of the world’s most impoverished countries, without attaching harmful strings such as enforced privatisations or trade liberalisation, then they will have failed this test and betrayed the expectations of millions.”

Nearly 10,000 members of the public heard Mr Mandela compare poverty to slavery and apartheid, as something that "can be eradicated by the actions of human beings" and say that failre to act now to put an end to poverty would be a "crime against humanity". Kumi Naidoo, the chair of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty - the international campaign of which MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY is a part - also spoke about the need to right the injustice of poverty and inequality in 2005. Bob Geldof, introducing Nelson Mandela, set a challenge to G7 to take responsibility and act on debt, trade justice and aid.

Campaigners made their voices heard through a wide range of actions, by staging protests, marches and media stunts, meeting with embassy representatives, delivering letters, issuing statements or holding press conferences. In Zambia, for example, campaigners from around the country held a protest march targeting the Canadian and Japanese embassies. Life expectancy in Zambia is just 33 years and 1 in 10 children die in childbirth, yet the Government this year is forced to spend more on repaying debts than on health.

In Tanzania, delegations from citizens groups met with the German and Canadian ambassadors to urge them to go further with debt cancellation. In 2005 Tanzania will pay out $110 million in debt service. If this debt was cancelled the government could increase health spending by 50 percent. Two out of every ten children in Tanzania die before their 5th birthday.

In the UK, Jubilee Debt Campaign and World Development Movement, one of its member organisations, staged a 'debt funeral', demanding that G7 countries 'Bury the Debt, not the Dead'. Campaigners dressed as mourners and pall bearers processed with a black horse-drawn hearse, a coffin, and flowers spelling out 'Bury the Debt' to the London embassies of the G7 countries and the official residences of the Prime Minister and Chancellor [Finance Minister]. (See press release.) The event drew attention to the fact that debt kills: every day, 30,000 children die because of poverty, while every day, the most impoverished countries are forced to give over £30 million in debt repayments to the rich world.

In Tajikstan, an NGO conference focused on the need for debt cancellation and ways to participate in the Global Call to Action Against Poverty. A number of letters were sent to G7 representatives, signed in total by nearly 1,000 organisations and active individuals.

Other actions took place in countries including Armenia, Finland, France, Germany, Ghana, Ireland, Italy, Mozambique, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Norway, Scotland, Sweden, Tajikstan, Tanzania, Uganda, the UK, Yemen and Zambia. Some of the statements issued by civil society as part of the Day of Action are available to download on the right of this page.

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