Sir, - In Honduras alone 29 of the 64 long-term development projects Trocaire supports in health, education, food security and other sectors have been destroyed. Among these is a major food security project covering a number of Central American countries co-financed by the European Union. Whole villages where Trocaire's partners were working no longer exist.
What Trocaire is experiencing first-hand is a small part of the massive devastation inflicted by Hurricane Mitch on the people of Honduras and Nicaragua. It is all the more tragic as these countries were emerging from years of conflict and faced huge levels of human deprivation. What's more, before this disaster these countries were already struggling to repay foreign debts. Now that burden is simply unbearable.
While much attention has focused on vital relief efforts and emergency plans to bring assistance to the region, effective action to tackle this debt burden is urgently required. Various debt packages have been announced. However, it is still very unclear how much additional resources will be available to these countries to deal with the disaster. Will the money allocated to debt packages be additional to aid flows or merely replace them?
There have been calls for a moratorium on debt servicing. A moratorium would free up resources in the short run. But on its own it is not enough. This is because it would merely postpone the problem of servicing debt. It would stop the clock on payments but would not provide a permanent solution to a disaster which has set the region back a generation.
This exceptional situation demands an exceptional response, namely full cancellation of these countries' foreign debts. Anything less than this will not work anyway as their export base has been ruined, and the long-term nature of much of their loans and associated repayments places a stranglehold on their ability to develop an export base in the future.
The Irish Government must use its voice at international forums to press for full debt cancellation for these countries. In addition to this, and given that Ireland is not a creditor nation, it is important that over the coming years our aid programme prioritises support for rehabilitation and development in the region.
In focusing on Central America's debt we must not forget the impact of debt in other parts of the developing world. Hence the Jubilee call for the cancellation of unpayable debts of the poorest countries by the year 2000. It shouldn't take the devastation of another Hurricane Mitch to mobilise international attention on the silent holocaust caused by debt in sub-Saharan Africa. Decisions on debt and the speed of response in taking them are, as ever, political ones. One of the lessons of the present disaster in Central America is that it is time to put life before debt. -Yours, etc., Justin Kilcullen
Director,
Trocaire.
Booterstown Avenue,
Blackrock,
Co Dublin.