EARTHKEEPING NEWS
A NEWSLETTER OF THE NORTH AMERICAN COALITION FOR CHRISTIANITY AND ECOLOGY

Volume Seven, Number Five
July/August 1998

Shame on you who live at ease in Zion, and you, untroubled on the hill of Samaria, men of mark in the first of nations! (Amos 6:1, NEB)

50,000 PROTEST G8 REFUSAL TO FORGIVE THIRD WORLD DEBT

Church bells rang out as an estimated fifty to seventy thousand people came to the streets of Birmingham, England, on May 16th to protest the failure of the world's most powerful nations to forgive the crippling debt of the poorest Third World countries. Organized by the Jubilee 2000 coalition of British churches, aid agencies and charities, the protesters held hands, sang, blew whistles and formed a seven mile chain around the headquarters of the G8 Economic Summit (group of 8 -- United States, France, Great Britain, Germany, Japan, Canada, Italy and Russia).

At St. Philip's Cathedral, Clare Short, Britain's International Development Secretary, received boxes of petitions, with 1.5 million signatures, demanding debt forgiveness by the year 2000, for the sake of the world's children.

The unexpected turnout in Birmingham was finally acknowledged by the Summit leaders sequestered in a country house. Prime Minister Tony Blair met with protesters in a private meeting in York. The G8 rejected the demand for an end to debt -- but they did ask the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to help post-war countries such as Rwanda and Congo to meet their debt arrears.

The Economic Secretary said in Parliament afterwards, "The G8 agreed to encourage all eligible countries to adopt the policy measures necessary to embark on the process of securing a sustainable exit to their debt burdens by the year 2000, and agreed that their export credit agencies would seek to ensure that their export credits to Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPCs) would be used only for productive expenditure."

The debt forgiveness petition campaign will continue through the 1999 Economic Summit. Coalition spokeswoman, Ann Pettifor, was delighted that the chair of the G8 had "finally acknowledged the extraordinary worldwide movement present in Birmingham today. We said all along that people in the streets of Birmingham were as important as eight men in a country house."

Information from: Christian Ecology Link (CEL) 20 Carlton Rd, Harrogate N., Yorkshire HG2 8DD; Christian Aid, PO Box, London SE1 7RT; and Independent on Sunday, 17 May 1998, 1 Canada Sq., Canary Wharf, London E14 5DL.

THE DEBT CRISIS

as explained in the British Jubilee 2000 petition packet.

  1. It's the 70s -- the oil-producing countries form a cartel to push up oil prices.
  2. They make a bundle -- and stick it in Western banks.
  3. Deluged with 'dosh', the banks set out to use it to make more by pushing loans on any country (and any leader) they can persuade to take one.
  4. Not surprisingly, the money is often spent on under-researched, unrealistic projects -- or wasted by dictators.
  5. Then -- disaster! New economic policies in the West send world interest rates sky high.
  6. Even more disaster! The prices of things poor countries buy (e.g. oil) rise . . . a lot. And the prices of things they sell (e.g. crops) fall . . . a lot.
  7. The poorest countries fall deeper and deeper into debt, paying and paying -- but because of the high interest, owing more at the end than they did at the start, taking out new loans to service old ones.
  8. It's the 90s. Today's children are paying with their health and education for the folly of a world gone mad 20 years before they were born.

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