The Joint Assembly heard calls expressing support for new initiatives to reduce the burden of Third World debt, which now stands at the astronomical figure of $2.2 thousand million. The countries worst affected, such as Nigeria and the ote D'Ivoire, Ivory Coast, are in sub-Saharan Africa, where the total amount of debt amounts to $222 billion or 71 per cent of gross national product. Other African countries facing serious debt problems such as Rwanda, Burundi and Mozambique have recently suffered from civil war and violent conflict. Servicing the debt is a crippling burden for the countries concerned and in the poorest countries accounts for 20 per cent of export earnings. In 1996 the World Bank identified the 41 poorest countries in urgent need of debt relief and a start has been made by cutting Uganda's debt burden.
To be entitled to debt relief the developing countries must undertake vital economic reforms identified by the IMF (International Monetary Fund). The world's richest nations have, however, now accepted the target of clearing up to 20 of the world's poorest countries of some $250 billion of debt by the year 2000, on condition that the countries concerned carry out the necessary economic reforms.