G-8 LEADERS SEEK SECLUSION FOR CRUCIAL DEBT DECISION

This weekend, the leaders of the world's wealthiest nations will gather in Okinawa, Japan, for their annual summit. As in recent years, the global debt crisis will be an unavoidable agenda item. This year, however, the VIPs are meeting on a remote island, surrounded by sharks, in an effort to elude the throngs of debt relief campaigners that encircled the Birmingham and Cologne summit venues.

There is another, more important, difference about this year's summit. It represents a rare kairos moment: the last, best opportunity for the rich powers to release poor nations from debt bondage before the end of this Jubilee year.

At last year's meeting in Cologne, G-7 leaders responded to the growing clamour for meaningful debt relief by promising to write off 70 percent of the foreign debt of 33 of the world's poorest nations--as much as US$90 billion. But this figure fell far short of the developing world's staggering US$2.2 trillion total external debt burden. Moreover, long waiting periods, demanding conditions, and the failure of the G-7 to fulfill completely their commitments has meant that even nations pursuing "model" policies, such as Uganda, have yet to see any of their debts erased. Other poor nations that have been less willing to play by World Bank/IMF rules are not even being considered.

As a result, most African governments continue to spend more annually on debt service than they do on health or education-- in spite of the fact that, in most cases, they have already paid back the principal many times over. Every day, poor governments pay rich creditors US$60 million in interest. Debt remains a mechanism by which the affluent North drains resources from the impoverished South.

The hopes of the world's poor are now fixed on Okinawa. Social investment and sustainable human development will remain beyond the reach of the developing nations as long as they must devote enormous public resources to servicing unpayable debts. The United Nations Development Programme estimates that, for each day that comprehensive debt relief is postponed, 19 000 children in the two-thirds world die needlessly. The time has come for the industrial powers to recognise the moral imperative of debt cancellation, to dispense with their cynical rhetoric, to make good on their promises, and to break the chains of debt that shackle developing countries.

The South African Council of Churches joins with Jubilee 2000 campaigns around the world in calling upon the G-8 leaders to observe this Jubilee year by:

• Halting immediately the collection of interest payments on the debts of developing countries, including South Africa, so that these resources can be diverted to investment in human development;
• Writing off, by the end of the year, 100 per cent of the developing world's debts, including those owed to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund;
• Initiating, with the full participation of developing nations, an extensive study of international systems of finance and trade in order to develop and implement practices that can avert future debt crises and ensure a more just global distribution of wealth and resources; and
• Acknowledging the enormous debts--human, moral, cultural, and economic--that the industrialised world owes to plundered nations.

We encourage SACC members, international partners, and people of faith around the world to mark the final day of the Okinawa Summit, Sunday, 23 July 2000, by praying for an end to debt bondage and the genesis of a more just society.

Office of the General Secretary