The people of ancient Israel had a law which prescribed an event called Jubilee. It took place every 50 years, and you can read all about it in Leviticus 25. At this time all slaves were set free, all land which had been bought or sold was returned to its original owners, the land itself was allowed to rest by lying fallow, and, just as happened every seven years (see Deuteronomy 15) all debts were cancelled. The whole institution of Jubilee was about freedom and equality: it reminded Israel that all God’s people were to be free, and that though there will always be differences of wealth in a society, a healthy society should take the necessary actions to even out those differences, and give everyone the means of making a fair living.
That notion of Jubilee has given its name to the Jubilee Debt Campaign (see www.jubileedebtcampaign.org.uk), a coalition of national organizations and local groups working to alleviate extreme poverty through the cancellation of unjust and unpayable poor country debt. They have designated the week 12th-18th October as Global Debt Week, an opportunity to remind us of the injustice of our world system, that condemns so many billions of our fellow-men and -women to abject poverty, while we in the West enjoy unparalleled wealth.
Some of the debt of some of the poorest nations was cancelled in 2000, but the great majority remains, and the conditions attached for cancellation are often undemocratic and discriminatory. They take little account of the legitimacy of the original debt, or of the ability to the country to repay it, without further harming the lives of a population already in dire poverty.
Many of the original debts originated in the 1970s, when huge increases in the price of oil left western banks with vast sums of money to lend. This was often achieved by lending to corrupt and undemocratic rulers of Third World countries. They were either used to sell expensive and unnecessary schemes that aggrandized the dictator, instead of bettering the people’s lives, or else they were forced through by economic coercion. Either way, it is now the children and children’s children who are suffering, in order that the present day governments may meet their debt repayments. Even when fragile democracies have replaced the dictators, they are still responsible for the debts run up by their former oppressors.
The result is that for every £1 of aid we give to the poorest countries, we get back £5 in debt repayments. By any standards, this is wrong. In fact you may well ask, “Why are some of the poorest countries in the world paying us anything at all?”
To compound the misery, some countries are now suffering attack by so-called ‘vulture funds’. These are companies, often based in tax havens like those supported by Britain, which have bought up defaulted debts, and then take the countries in question to international courts, insisting on repayment of the full amount, with costs. In recent years, 12 of the world's poorest countries have been forced to pay claims totalling $1.5 billion. This money, which could have been spent on health and education in those poor countries, has gone instead into the pockets of wealthy western investors. I guess most people in this country have never even heard of vulture funds. I guess, too, that most people would agree the practice is evil and wrong.
We really should call for Third World debt to be cancelled for the sake of justice as well as a healthy world economy. Some facts and figures may help put this in perspective. The British Government has just baled out Lloyds TSB to the tune of $24 billion. The whole western debt of Bangladesh (one of the poorest countries of the world, where 36% of people live on less than $1 per day, yet which is making huge efforts to meet its debt repayments) is only $20 billion. The US bale-out of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac cost $200 billion; the total western debt of the whole of sub-Saharan Africa is only $173 billion. Again we have to ask: how is it right for us all to pay the debts of those who got us into the present economic mess - and still award themselves salaries and bonuses the rest of us can’t even imagine - but not do anything to help these poorest of the poor?
Please remember Global Debt Week this year. Find out more about it from the campaign web site. And write to your MP calling for legislation to curb the activities of the vulture funds: End the Vulture Culture!
Published in the Marston Times, October 2009