| Third
World Debt |
Sapped!
How a privileged minority take the wealth of the world by unleashing debt monsters on the
poor When you borrow from a bank you pay an interest — more than what
you borrowed. And if you cannot repay the loan in a short time, the interest keeps adding
and finally, you might end up paying more than double of what you borrowed. In the 1970s
and 1980s, many poor countries in Africa and Latin America were given loans
indiscriminately by ‘loan sharks’ like the World Bank and governments of rich
countries, and got caught in the debt trap. How? Three things occurred which sent the debt
of poor Third World (developing countries) spiraling:
- The richer countries increased interest rates massively, so debt repayments rocketed up.
- The prices of primary products (agricultural produce, minerals) fell by 30% on average,
so Third World incomes, which are dependent on natural resource, nose-dived.
- Oil prices quadrupled, driving up costs.All of these events were beyond the control of
Third World countries. Today they are in the grips of the Debt monsters.
The effects:
 Africa’s
poorest countries spend four times more on debt repayments than on health.
According to
UN figures, 19,000 children die each day due to third world debt.
For every $1
(Rs 47) received in aid grants in 1998, Sub Saharan Africa repaid $1.41 (Rs 66.27). Africa
now owes more than three times what it initially borrowed!
In Nicaragua,
debt repayments account for more than a third of government spending, double the amount
spent for education and clean water provision.
Each
Bangladeshi of the 120 million people
in Bangladesh owe $134 (Rs 7000) to the richest countries in the world!
Countries not able to make their debt payments take further
loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) with stiff conditions, known as
Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs). SAPs require governments to privatise industries,
devalue the currency and cut spending on health, education and jobs. Cuts to health and
social services fall most heavily upon women and female children.
To repay this debt, rainforests are being destroyed, fish stocks are being exhausted, and land is being
stripped for mines to increase exports.
Want to create your own
DEBTMONSTER?
click on www.jubilee-kids.org
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| SO WHO OWES WHOM? |
 ‘The technologies
and the way of life of the industrialised societies have had irreversible impacts on the
biosphere and have provoked the impoverishment or disappearance of a great number of
people, cultures and ethnic groups, thus seriously threatening the continuation of life on
the planet. These industrialised societies owe an Ecological Debt to the biosphere and the
peoples of the South (developing countries). Besides there is a debt to the biosphere, and
therefore a debt to the peoples that have used the biosphere sustainably’.
International Campaign for the Recognition and Payment of the
Ecological Debt — ACCION ECOLOGICA,
Quito, Ecuador |
| "People who are drinking cocoa or coffee are
drinking their blood,"
Salia Kante, Director,
Save the Children Fund, Mali |
The
Chocolate
Slaves |
| Many of Malian children are kidnapped
and sold into slavery. In all, at least 15,000 children are thought to be over in the
neighbouring Ivory Coast, producing cocoa which then goes towards making almost half of
the world's chocolate.
Condensed from The Independent, 16.04.2001
The Etireno sailed from the port of Cotounou in Benin (Nigeria's western
neighbour) in mid-April reportedly with a cargo of sickly children 'sold' by their
poverty-stricken families to slave traffickers. Parents hand their children over in the
belief they will be placed in well-paid work and educated in richer Gabon. The parents
receive as little as £8 (Rs 500). The traffickers sell the children for up to £180 (Rs
12, 600) each to work as domestic servants or on cocoa plantations. The 'chocolate slaves'
of the Ivory Coast come from the region's poorest countries - Mali, Benin, Togo and the
Central African Republic. Campaigners report that children are forced to work 12 hours a
day and are sometimes physically and sexually abused.
Fifteen Jubilee 2000 Kids
representing 40 groups from schools and churches in Britain are saying to leaders of rich
countries,
 "Drop the Debt!"
Outside Number 10 Downing Street, the British Prime Ministers
Office, the children laid down bags of cash which they had saved by fasting from
chocolate.
(Source of information on this page: www.jubilee-kids.org) |
| Jubilee
2000 The poorest
countries in the world now owe more than $2.1 (Rs 98.7) trillion to their richer
neighbours — that is $2,100,000,000,000
(or Rs 98,700,000,000,000)
Jubilee 2000 is an international movement which
called for cancellation of this unpayable debt of the world's poorest countries by the
year 2000. The movement draws its inspiration from the book of Leviticus in the Hebrew
Scriptures, which describes a Year of Jubilee every fifty years. In the Jubilee year,
social inequalities are rectified: slaves are freed, land is returned to original owners,
and debts are canceled.
Presently, Third World countries are being
pressured to increase exports to repay their debts. But the more they export, the less
these countries receive. For example, between 1980 and 1995, the volume of exports from
Latin America increased by 245 per cent. Between 1985 and 1996, 2,706 million tons of
basic resources, mostly non-renewable, were extracted to make products for export. The
amount of resources transformed, destroyed or moved in order to produce these exports has
not been calculated. Nor the number of people affected or displaced.
The idea of private property was not developed in
tribal societies |
Africa’s poorest countries spend four times more on debt repayments, than on health
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A Down To
Earth Supplement
