Help break the chains of debt that bind the world’s most impoverished countries.
Call your Representative today (202-224-3121) and ask your Representative to support the Jubilee Act (H.R. 2634). The bill will be considered on the House floor in early April. It would expand eligibility for debt cancellation to 67 impoverished countries.
The Presbyterian Washington Office tells us that the world’s most impoverished countries spend more than $100 million each day in debt payments to wealthy governments and financial institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In countries where the majority of our sisters and brothers live on less than $1 per day, this money could be spent on clean water, health care, and education, not sent to the world’s wealthiest financial institutions. In 2000 and again in 2005, world leaders cancelled billions of dollars of debt in dozens of impoverished countries around the world. The money freed by debt cancellation so far has been used to fight AIDS, enroll children in school, provide clean water, improve rural infrastructure and more. Much more needs to be done. The most important and prophetic debt legislation in seven years, the Jubilee Act, will expand access to debt cancellation to all the countries that need it to fight extreme poverty. Countries will need to meet strict eligibility requirements and commit to use the money to fight poverty.
General Assembly Guidance: In 1998, the General Assembly endorsed and supported the ‘definitive cancellation of international debt in situations where countries with high levels of human need and environmental distress are unable to meet the needs of their people. . . in a way that benefits ordinary people and facilitates their participation in the processes of. . . debt relief.”
The Jubilee USA Network provides more information about the Jubilee Act and Global Debt.