Start to make poverty history in 2005; cancel the debt

international | anti-capitalism | opinion/analysis Tuesday February 22, 2005 17:33 by rory hearne - swp hearner at yahoo dot co dot uk

Start to make poverty history in 2005; cancel the debt



On the 23rd of February, Make Poverty History Ireland are launching their campaign to “mobilise citizens and policy makers in Ireland to bring about the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. The campaign is calling for urgent policy reform in the linked issues of trade, aid and debt. Make Poverty History is mobilising around key opportunities in 2005 to drive forward the struggle against poverty and injustice”. These include the G8 summit in Scotland in July and the WTO meeting in Hong Kong in December.

Start to make poverty history in 2005; cancel the debt



On the 23rd of February, Make Poverty History Ireland are launching their campaign to “mobilise citizens and policy makers in Ireland to bring about the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. The campaign is calling for urgent policy reform in the linked issues of trade, aid and debt. Make Poverty History is mobilising around key opportunities in 2005 to drive forward the struggle against poverty and injustice”. These include the G8 summit in Scotland in July and the WTO meeting in Hong Kong in December.

The campaign includes development coalitions, relief and development agencies, faith based groups, trade unions and campaigning groups. It is part of the Global Call To Action Against Poverty which held a rally, introduced by Nelson Mandela and Bob Geldof, of tens of thousands at Trafalgar Square last week, and was initially launched at the Lula meeting at the World Social Forum in January.

Their manifesto opens with “The gap between the world’s rich and poor is wider than ever. Global injustices such as poverty, AIDS, malnutrition, conflict and illiteracy remain rife. Despite the promises of our world leaders, at our present sluggish rate of progress the world will fail to reach the so-called Millennium Development Goals-internationally agreed targets to halve global poverty by 2015”.

One of the main causes of poverty is the debt crisis that is enforced on the majority world by western countries, banks and the IMF and World Bank.

Did Blair and Brown cancel the debts? Not at all

Despite all the hype, countries affected by the tsunami only got the interest on the their debt payments deferred, and that only lasts until the end of this year.

In December 2000 the UK government cancelled debts owed directly to the UK (bilateral debt) by the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC). However, as multilateral debt (owed to creditors like the International Monetary Fund and World Bank) is ‘preferred’ or priority debt most bilateral debt is not being paid currently, so cancelling it has no real effect.

Only 10% of debts of the most poorest countries has been written off.

At the G7 meeting in London in February Gordon Brown, UK Chancellor, said
“some 37 countries could benefit after a case-by-case review by bodies including the World Bank and IMF”.
“The G7 have agreed to provide as much as 100% multilateral debt relief”.

Proposals put forward by UK and Canada would not cancel debt stock, but only relieve debt service payments until 2015.

Debt relief was on condition of “government reforms and the need for transparency”.


Last year the Republic of Ireland reneged on its promise to provide 0.7% of national income in aid by 2007.

Cancel all the debt with no conditions

Neil Watkins, Jubilee USA network, responded “we insist this plan must be actual debt cancellation -- not just debt service relief--that it apply to all impoverished countries, and that it must come without devastating economic conditions… The IMF can sell gold and raise more than $35bn and the World Bank can raise at least $17bn to fund debt cancellation”. (www.jubileeusa.org)


The Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative (HIPC) was started in 1996. Since then only 15 countries have receive relief under the plan. For HIPC countries, external debt has gone up 320% since 1980 to $189bn.

IMF and WB conditions (also in the HIPC plans) include cuts in health and education spending, enforced privatisation of state-run industries, removal of food and fuel subsidies to the poor, lowering tariffs on raw material production. It is crippling privatisation and liberalisation that hits the hardest.


Case example: Zambia

Zambia used 7.35% of its GDP ($377 million) in repaying its debt in 2004. It spends twice as much on debt as it does on education. At the behest of the IMF it has privatised public utilities, removed subsidies, deregulated its markets and opened its doors to foreign imports. Despite this it only had 5% of its debt reduced under the HIPC initiative. It was once one of Sub-Sahara’s wealthiest countries. But it is now placed lower on the Human Development index than in 1975. Life expectancy is now just 33 years. The Zambian ministry of health said that it expects half the population to die of AIDS.

Blair, Brown and Lula are not the saviours of the poor

Fantastic campaigns by groups like Jubilee 2000, who brought tens of thousands to protest at the G8 summit in Birmingham in 1998, the protests at the G8 summits in Genoa and Evian and global anti-war protests, have successfully forced debt and poverty on to the agenda. There has been some minimal action on debt, but most is just hot air. The UN estimates that over seven million children die each year from curable diseases and from unclean water that could be made safe. Furthermore, the UNDP Human Development Report 2003 stated “Our best estimate is that halving of poverty will not be achievable in Sub Saharan Africa for at least another hundred years”.

We should, therefore support the Make Poverty History campaign and mobilise to get as many people as possible to protest at the G8 summit.

But we should not allow the Third-way leaders like Blair or Lula use the concern over global poverty and Africa as a way of re-inventing themselves as caring leaders. They are the very ones implementing neo-liberal policies. They do, however, also feel the pressure from millions of people in our movement. Through large mobilisations we can make them sweat even more.

Ending poverty for good

If we are to really end poverty there needs to be a 100% cancellation of all debt for all the majority world countries and the institutions forcing through neo-liberalism like the IMF, WB and WTO should be disbanded.

While half the world’s population lives on less than $2 a day, the wealth of 200 of the world’s richest people exceeds the gross domestic product of the world’s 170 poorest countries. Clearly the most urgent demand is that resources are transferred on a massive scale from the rich to the poor.

Neither Brown, Blair nor Lula are going to (or even want to) achieve this. It is up to us and the action of mass movements like the striking French public sector workers, the miners of Bolivia, the people of Venezuela, the landless peasants in Brazil, the millions who marched against the war and the 100,000s who will be protesting at the G8 summit to bring about such change.

All of us should work to ensure the G8 mobilisations are as large as possible and that they strengthen the grassroots movement and help mobilise further, rather than just ending up in the nice, but never fulfilled promises that will be uttered at the press conference by the G8 leaders.

The Make Poverty History campaign is launching on the 23rd February at 1pm at the Spire, O'Connell Street. It is an alliance open to national, regional or local organisations based in Ireland. (www.makepovertyhistory.ie)
See also www.g8alternatives.org.uk for details of other protests at the G8 Summit

Debt cripples the third world-Facts

Poor countries pay $100m in debt repayments every day.
The poorest countries have handed $3,450 bn to the wealthiest nations since 1982.
Indonesia ‘owes’ $132bn. Most of it accumulated by the Suharto dictatorship. It repays $13.7bn per annum in debt.
Nigeria borrowed $5bn, has paid back $16bn and still owes $16bn on the same debt.
India ‘owes’ $132bn and pays $13bn per year.
Thailand ‘owes’ $59bn and pays $17.9bn per year.

By Rory Hearne