APPENDIX 5
Memorandum from Tearfund
Tearfund is a Christian relief and development agency working
in over 90 countries of the world in partnership with churches
and church-based organisations. Tearfund currently supports a
wide range of projects centring on healthcare, water improvement,
agriculture, training and small-scale industry, as well as education.
Our main focus is in Africa where our partners have first
hand experience of the debilitating effects of debt. Some of our
work in healthcare and education is necessary only because the
state cannot provide these basic services while it must divert
precious resources into debt repayment. We believe that forcing
the poorest countries to pay back their debts is hindering their
development efforts, blunting the impact of development aid provided
by UK taxpayers and making the work of development agencies such
as Tearfund and their partners more difficult.
We acknowledge debt relief is a highly complex political
and economic issue but it is also a deeply moral issue. As a Christian
organisation working with that the world's poor we believe that
it is morally indefensible that the world's poorest countries
are transferring their scarce resources to the rich West. For
an impoverished country such as Mozambique to spend a third of
its GNP on debt repayments while cutting expenditure on health
and education is simply wrong. The plain truth of this would,
we believe, be obvious to most members of the British public.
Without timely and effective cancellation of the unpayable debts
of the world's poorest countries the British Government's goal
of halving the world's poor by the year 2015 will be unachievable.
Tearfund was a founder member of Jubilee 2000 and is an active
member of the Jubilee 2000 Coalition. We fully support their proposals
for debt relief and therefore will not reproduce the arguments
here. However, to conclude, we would like to emphasise three points:
1. As a Christian development organisation we wish to celebrate
the new millennium in a meaningful and lasting way by achieving
something that will radically improve the lives of the world's
poor in the next century and promote the sustainable development
of the planet for which we are responsible. We believe that cancelling
unpayable third world debt would be the single most significant
action to achieve these objectives. The popular and religious
significance of the millennium means that there will not be another
opportunity like this and it is vital that the British Government
makes the most of it.
2. The HIPC Initiative, while welcome, proceeds at the pace
of the slowest creditor and is unlikely to provide any effective
debt relief if continually reduced to the lowest common denominator.
We believe that the British Government should take a moral lead
by unilaterally cancelling the bilateral debts of the poorest
countries owed to the UK and by encouraging other creditors to
do the same.
3. 1998 offers unique opportunities for the British Government
to build on its respected record on this issue and to push for
quicker and more flexible implementation of existing debt relief
programmes. We understand that the HIPC Initiative is stalling
due to resistance by creditors such as Germany and we ask that
the Government use its Presidency of the EU to encourage the European
nations to be more generous in their attitude towards debt cancellation.
We also urge the Government to use its presidency of the G8 to
put debt relief high on the agenda at the annual summit in May
and to show that the world's richest nations are serious about
their commitment to the eradication of global poverty.
Andy Atkins
Public Policy Advisor
Tearfund
23 January 1998
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