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Recently the Jubilee 2000 campaign and the cancelling of the third world’s debt has been in the news a lot with many famous pop stars supporting the campaign, and the trendy thing to do is to wear a chain. But why? What’s it all about? What are the arguments for debt cancellation? Why should we be bothered as Christians? Let me give you the story so far …
Once upon a time in the 1970’s the rich western oil producing countries found that the prices started to increase. This meant that all these countries got richer, but what to do with the extra money!? There was surplus cash in all the banks and, well, cash doesn’t just grow by itself it needs to be invested in something. So someone suggested loaning it to the third world. Great idea, said everyone else, the third world you see was rather poor and needed some extra cash, and the rich countries knew they could make some more money on the interest eventually — everyone was happy!! The loans were arranged at an interest rate of around 4% which seemed very reasonable to everyone. The third world went away with its money and spent it... on development, health, education, arms and corruption. (Well I never said they were all good guys over there!!)
Now just after the 1970’s came along the BIG bad nasty 80’s, when the interest rates started to rise, the interest owed on the loans which had been oh-so-reasonable in the 70’s just grew and grew and grew. And dear oh dear oh dear the third world just couldn’t afford the increased payments and was thrown into crisis. Now the rich western countries weren’t very happy about this, they wanted their money back — “if they couldn’t afford to pay it back they shouldn’t have taken it out in the first place” they all said. So they sent in their best financial wizards to try and find a way for the poor countries to pay. The guys invented SAPs (Structural Adjustment Programmes) which were meant to improve the poor countries economy so that they could afford to pay. What these SAPs actually meant was that the government had to spend less and earn more. Of course governments can’t just spend less without there being consequences — we all know from experience that when a government promises to cut taxes this will inevitably mean that you end up waiting longer at the hospital or that your kids are taught in larger classes at school. Well the same was true in the third world; primary schools started charging fees, some high schools closed and clinics no longer had the drugs and resources they needed to treat people effectively. But the earning more bit sounds good though doesn’t it — well what this actually meant was that instead of growing food for local people the land was used to grow cash crops for profit. For the local people this meant a big rise in the price of food so some starved. Also because all the third world countries were told to grow the same type of cash crops by the SAPs the price of these crops actually fell so they didn’t make that much profit after all.
After all this the third world is still in a mess; they are borrowing more to pay back the debts they owe. People are dying everyday because of these debts and the policies the west enforces to try and get them repaid. If these countries were people they would have been declared bankrupt and the debts wiped long ago, so what’s to stop us doing it now?
Jubilee 2000 is a campaign to cancel the unpayable debt of the third world by the year 2000. More than this amount has already been made provision for by the Western banks and countries. We aren’t asking for an unconditional cancellation either we realise that there have to be some restrictions over what the money is spent on so that dictators can’t just use it to increase their power or arms.
As a Christian I feel we have a duty to highlight injustice in the world and resolve it so please, please help the campaign by wearing a chain, signing the petition and telling other people about it. For more information about the campaign you can contact any of the organisations involved in the campaign which include Christian Aid, MAYC and CAFOD. Or me, Rachel, email rc121@york.ac.uk.
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Last modified: 25th November 2005