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Time |
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| Politicians
are finally calling for debt relief - but
Jubilee 2000 wants more |
| by
Melissa Wall |
Jubilee
2000 - the global movement to cancel the Third
World debt - has often been seen as the arm
of the global economic justice movement you
could take home to meet your mother. Its members
are folks who know to bathe before they meet
with public officials. Grounded in the Bible,
its main message exudes moral authority. And
its public events have been marked by gentler,
less confrontational gestures, like the march
downtown from Capitol Hill, where demonstrators
formed a human chain around the Federal Building.
In one of the largest actions for debt cancellation
to date, more than 20,000 people joined hands
in the human chain at the opening reception
of the World Trade Organization in Seattle
last year.
Only a few years ago, Jubilee's goal - for
the IMF, World Bank and wealthy countries
to cancel the debts of the world's poorest
countries - was a radical idea. Today, debt
cancellation is gaining mainstream favor.
"Through the Jubilee movement, we've been
able to put issues facing the world's poorest
countries onto the social agenda," says the
Rev. Pete Strimer, Canon Missioner at St.
Mark's Episcopal Cathedral, a member of the
Jubilee 2000 Northwest Coalition. "Within
our own country, it was the Jubilee 2000 movement
that made debt relief a public policy issue."
Those interested in lobbying the government
have, at first glance, been enormously successful.
Last year at a meeting in Germany, the G-7,
the world's richest countries, agreed to prioritize
debt relief. Various countries introduced
follow-up legislation. The U.S. House and
Senate have been considering their own versions:
the most ambitious is H.R. 1095, the Debt
Relief for Poverty Reduction Act, which has
been stuck in committee since last fall. It's
doubtful that Congress will act before adjourning
in mid-October. Still, Seventh District Representative
Jim McDermott has been publicly supportive,
meeting with Jubilee 2000 Northwest members.
Now that the issues are on the agenda, the
movement faces some serious questions about
its future. Will it end when the year 2000
is over? Or, since debt cancellation is on
the policy agenda, should the movement take
the lead with a more radical perspective?
The answer depends on which country, and indeed
which region or city, you ask.
More than 65 countries around the world have
Jubilee 2000 organizations, which range from
slow-moving bureaucracies to more nimble,
grassroots groups like the Seattle-based Jubilee
2000 Northwest, a network of nearly 30 groups
ranging from faith-based communities to labor
to human rights advocates. Each Jubilee group
tends to chart its own course concerning Third
World debt.
For the local coalition, the answer to whether
the movement should close up shop come the
year 2001 is an easy one: No, says Michael
Ramos, program associate for church and economic
justice for the Washington Association of
Churches. "The countries in the South - with
whom we sympathize quite a bit here - are
saying, 'We're building a movement here, and
there's a lot of energy in the grassroots.
We have to continue on.'"
To continue doing what is a complicated question.
Because Jubilee Northwest has successfully
attracted a range of supporters, Strimer says
it also has a spectrum of opinions about the
debt issue and the movement's position. Some
members look beyond government to see the
debt as the "entry to the entire globalization
and neocolonialist issue," says Strimer. And
so far, despite signs of hope, the IMF, the
World Bank and Congress have fallen short
of the movement's goals.
For some in the movement, waiting for politicians
to act is fraught with too many compromises.
For example, McDermott's support for debt
cancellation is tempered by his sponsorship
of a controversial new law, the African Growth
and Opportunity Act, or what its critics call
NAFTA for Africa.
"I wouldn't call him a foe, but he has a neoliberal
approach to development," says Strimer, who
wishes McDermott was as outspoken on debt
as he has been on trade.
Other members of the coalition believe economic
development and debt cancellation are incompatible.
"McDermott is pushing trade, and we're asking
for a new beginning. I think these are two
different things," says Hanna Petros, executive
director of coalition member Ustawi, a local
nonprofit that educates the Northwest about
Africa-related issues. Petros, a native of
Ethiopia, has stopped counting on U.S. politicians.
The strength of any social movement is in
its grassroots, she says; Jubilee 2000 must
back up the agenda of its members in the poor
countries.
These days, they're asking for more than mere
debt cancellation. For example, Anglican Archbishop
Njongonkulu Ndungane of South Africa has said
the Third World countries have waited long
enough for action, they have met their lending
institution's ever-changing requirements for
debt relief. They have privatized their economies
and cut social services to the bone, and still
no relief has come.
Asking these countries to continue servicing
their debts when they are already so poor
is "economically irrational and morally unacceptable,"
according to the development agency OXFAM.
More than half of the people living in the
world's poorest countries survive on a dollar
a day, one in six children dies before the
age of 5 from poverty-related diseases, and
almost 50 million children are not in school.
Ndungane calls on all poor countries to simply
stop making debt payments to wealthy countries.
Locally, Petros is studying the legal and
economic ramifications of Ndungane's call.
Meanwhile, the Jubilee 2000 South movement,
made up of the Third World countries, has
declared debt cancellation too timid a course
of action. Such debts are illegitimate, Jubilee
South argues, and in return for all the violence,
economic and environmental devastation which
the Northern countries have created, the Third
World should in fact receive reparations.
In other places, the movement has become a
call for democracy and the means to eliminate
poverty.
Strimer believes that, at least locally, these
diverse points of view can be accommodated.
He says the range of opinions members raise
is the very strength of Jubilee Northwest.
"We couldn't do it unless it was a broad coalition,"
he says. No matter your point of view, "you
begin to see the debt as a system of domination
and power over people in many countries. Then
it becomes possible to undertake not only
legislative action, but organizing - which
is what it is going to take, over the long
haul."
Jubilee Northwest believes that listening
to the South is just as important as charting
its own actions. So, while sending out alerts
for members to contact Congress about debt
cancellation legislation, the coalition has
also endorsed the archbishop's statement.
They have called on local and national affiliates
to do the same.
For Petros, connecting with people in the
poor countries is where change really begins.
"I hope that Jubilee Northwest continues working
with and trying to hear the voices of the
South," says Petros. "In that way, we can
make a difference." |
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