Sir, - This week the spring meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) take place in Washington. Third World debt is once again on the agenda. As these events take place Trocaire has received reports of children in Zimbabwe pulling ploughs because farmers cannot afford to replace cattle that have died. At the same time the Zimbabwean government has to find resources to repay its foreign debt, a debt which, more than almost any other factor, is keeping Third World countries poor.
In 1997 Third World debt totalled over $2.2 trillion, of which nearly $250 billion was repaid to creditors, mainly the richest OECD countries. The result is that for every dollar received in aid more than four dollars comes back in debt payments. While such figures may be hard to comprehend, their impact is not. In Zambia, the removal of subsidies in order to fund debt repayments has meant that the price of maize, the staple food, went up six-fold between 1992 and 1997. This means that many families can no longer afford a daily meal.
In October 1996 the World Bank and IMF agreed a debt-relief plan: the Highly Indebted Poor Country Initiative (HIPC). The plan recognises, albeit belatedly, that a comprehensive solution to the debt crisis is needed. However, to date not a single country has received debt relief (Uganda will be the first to benefit later this month). The difference in the approach taken to the highly indebted poor countries which are mainly in sub-Saharan Africa and the response to the Asian financial collapse is stark. Progress in gathering the $7.4 billion required for the HIPC has been slow and painful, in sharp contrast to the massive financing package, totalling more than $100 billion, which the IMF proposed for South Korea, Indonesia and Thailand.
This funding deficit is evidence of a lack of political will among the governments of the world's richest nations to deal with the debt crisis. The fact that this crisis is almost a quarter of a century old is an indictment of the international community.
This is why, to coincide with the spring meetings, two international networks of Catholic development agencies, of which Trocaire is a part, are launching a joint policy document entitled Putting Life Before Debt. In it we support the Jubilee call for the cancellation of the unpayable debt of the most impoverished countries by the year 2000.
Pope John Paul II has said that "Christians will have to raise their voice on behalf of the poor of the world, proposing the Jubilee as an appropriate time to give thought to reducing substantially, if not cancelling outright, the international debt which seriously threatens the future of many nations."
As states prepare to mark the millennium by building domes and the like, the document proposes that a more fitting and fulfilling tribute would entail cancelling the unpayable debts of the world's poorest nations. There could not be a more worthy millennium project to celebrate our common humanity. This would also go a long way towards consigning the term Third World to history as we enter the third millennium. - Yours, etc.,
Justin Kilcullen
Director, Trocaire, Blackrock, Co Dublin.