Column Bill would relieve bewildering debt problem
By ROBERT F. DRINAN
If you get bewildered when you hear
about poor countries with staggering debts, join the crowd!
I have followed the tragic story of how, after the nations in OPEC
quintupled the price of oil, they lent billions to U.S. lending entities, which
in turn loaned massive amounts of money to underdeveloped countries. After a
generation, impoverished nations like Mozambique send a $100 million a year in
debt payments to rich countries even though less than 50 percent of
Mozambiques citizens have access to safe drinking water and most children
do not go to primary school.
The same is true for 40 nations classified by the World Bank as
highly indebted. These countries account for nearly one-fifth of
the worlds people; 32 percent of these nations are located in sub-Sahara
Africa. These 32 nations owe foreign creditors an average of almost $400 for
every man, woman and child. These nations collect and transfer $13 billion each
year to their creditors.
It is painfully clear that the situation is awful but not
everyone, including this author, can follow the discussion about restructuring
debts in the legalese of the World Bank and the International Monetary
Fund.
In an address in March 1999 to the representatives of 46 African
nations, President Clinton promised a deeper and faster debt
relief. These programs may well be coming up for a vote in Congress before
Christmas. They are included in Bill H.R. 1095, The Debt Relief for Poverty
Reduction Act. This bill, authored by Congressman Jim Leach, R-Iowa, has the
endorsement of the U.S. Catholic Conference, Bread for the World, Oxfam and a
broad coalition of humanitarian organizations.
Bread for the World, which just finished the celebration of its
25th year, is taking the leadership role on mobilizing support for the Leach
bill. Leach is chairman of the House Banking Committee and has broad bipartisan
support for his creative proposition. Bread for the World supports this as a
part of its program for the Jubilee Year.
Pope John Paul II referred to the Jubilee Year and the urgent need
for debt forgiveness in his address in St. Louis in February 1999. The idea of
forgiveness or allowing nations to declare bankruptcy is in the Hebrew
scriptures, especially in Leviticus, which calls for a year of jubilee every 50
years.
The calendar of Congress in the fall and winter will be crowded
with things that to many members of Congress are far less complicated and more
important than debt forgiveness to the poorest nations in the world. The
members of Congress need to know that large numbers of people in America feel
strongly that Mozambique and some 40 other nations deserve relief.
Bread for the World will furnish excellent material on this issue;
its address is 1100 Wayne Avenue, Silver Spring MD 20910. The phone is (301)
608-2400; fax is (301) 608-2401. Heading Bread for the World is David Beckman,
an expert on international economics and a former official in the international
lending organizations.
A large unconditional write-off of international debts is not
politically realistic. But the proposals in the Leach bill have a chance of
becoming law. The 40 poorest nations will be more destitute 10 years from now
unless the debt that is strangling them is at least partially forgiven.
Jesuit Fr. Robert Drinan is a professor at Georgetown
University Law Center.
National Catholic Reporter, September 17,
1999
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