Jubilee Northwest Coalition

 Ana Maria Nemenzo of the Philippines refers to the odious debts incurred by Ferdinand Marcos, including the Bataan nuclear plant, built near several earthquake fault lines and at the foot of a dormant volcano, and plagued by allegations of corruption since construction began in 1975. The plant has not 

Jonah Gokova of Zimbabwe, Magda Lanuza of Nicaragua, and Ana Maria Nemenzo of the Philippines want the World Bank and other lenders to cancel the debts incurred to their countries by corrupt, undemocratic leaders.
Photo by Justin Mills

Lanuza, Gokova, and Nemenzo appeared in Seattle last week as part of a national “Global Connections Tour 2005.” They were accompanied by Neil Watkins, the National Coordinator of Jubilee USA, begun in 2000 as a movement to proclaim “Jubilee,” the periodic cancelling of debt practiced under the laws of the biblical book of Leviticus. Jubilee USA has grown into a network of more than 70 organizations committed to resolving third-world debt, including religious denominations and faith-based organizations, labor unions, environmental groups, and community and solidarity organizations, represented locally by Jubilee NW.

These advocates estimate that 30,000 people a week die of poverty-related causes, many of them children, and mostly in the countries of the Southern Hemisphere where, for every dollar of aid or trade that flows in, $1.50 flows out in debt payments.

Under a 100-year-old legal principle called the “Doctrine of Odious Debt,” debts that have been incurred for legitimate improvement of the country justly remain obligatory for succeeding generations or administrations. Debts that were incurred to line the pockets of corrupt administrators, support a despotic regime, or repress a people, however, are unjustly held against that people after the end of the regime.
Since 1975, the major seven free-market countries of the world (Japan, Germany, France, Italy, United Kingdom, Canada, and the U.S.) have been meeting periodically to discuss international economic issues in what are called the G7 summits. This February, at a meeting in London, the G7 officially declared the need for “as much as 100 percent multilateral debt relief.”

The small amount of relief provided by “structural adjustment programs” instituted by the World Bank and the IMF (International Monetary Fund) since Mexico defaulted on its loans in 1982 has made some development possible in poor countries, with good results. While lowering current payments, the adjustments extend the nation’s debt further into the future, and they come with conditions that many find onerous, including institution of school and clinic fees, privatization of water and utilities, and curtailment of government programs. Impoverished countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America continue to spend more on debt service payments than they pay on social services like health care and education. Since the G7 began discussing debt cancellation proposals in June 2004, an estimated four million children under the age of 5 have died from preventable diseases. Many countries are poised on the brink of becoming the next Argentina: total economic meltdown.

The JUBILEE Act (HR 1130), now being considered in the U.S. Congress, calls for debt cancellation for 50 impoverished nations, and it insists that such cancellation come without devastating economic conditions and be paid for from the IMF/World Bank’s own resources. The IMF itself has reported that it could sell enough of its own immense gold reserves to finance debt cancellation, without negatively impacting the world market price for gold.

U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow, however, has said that “we are not persuaded by arguments for IMF debt relief.”
The Global Connections Tour aims to make grassroots connections between the debt issue and other economic, social, and environmental justice issues, that will strengthen the global economic justice movement. As Magda Lanuza says, “Education is one key thing that we need to do with people, to organize them and tell them what is happening.” Ana Maria Nemenzo, an activist for more than four decades, dryly comments, “There is nothing like a crisis to push for reforms.”
The next stop on the tour is Portland, OR.