Author: Christelle Terreblanche, Cape Argus
Date: January 25, 2007
Source: Cape Argus, SA http://www.capeargus.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=3645888

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Nairobi, Kenya: Pressure is set to mount on rich countries in the north, as well as international financial institutions, for the total cancellation of billions of dollars in loans owed by poor, developing countries.

The annual World Social Forum (WSF) is drawing to a close in Nairobi, Kenya, and the demand for debt cancellation and reparations for the historical exploitation of the south by colonisers and lenders is becoming a key focus for its participants.

The WSF adopted a declaration on outstanding debt by industrialised countries, saying it was their reckless, self-interested, irresponsible and exploitative lending that had fostered the crisis.

Many developing countries spend much of their budgets on debt servicing at the expense of social spending.

Participants said it was a scandal that the rich world demanded hundreds of millions of dollars from the south every day to pay "debts" which had emerged from the unjust economic relations that impoverished the south and enriched the north.

The WSF, held for the first time in Africa, was attended by nearly 50 000 activists and members of social movements, NGOs, churches and trade unions.

The campaign against debt is not new.

Some success was had in an agreement on the cancellation of the debt of the most heavily indebted poor countries at a G8 summit at Gleneagles in 2005. Countries like Kenya, which pays 22% of its budget to service debt, are excluded.

WSF participants now want 100% cancellation.

They have broadened demands to include a call for reparations from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which they say were key to more recent reckless lending and, particularly, resulted in environmental damage in many countries.

They declared that debt was a political problem that reinforced unequal power relations and continued to be used as an instrument of control through conditions attached to loans and debt relief.

The declaration came on the same day that the rich industrialised countries and multinational companies began their annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland.

On Monday, Wangari Maathai, Kenya's Nobel laureate environmental activist, renewed her call for Western countries to write off debts owed by poor southern nations. Maathai urged church leaders to spearhead the cancellation of debts owed to G8 countries.

The debt crisis was a key obstacle to fighting poverty in Africa, Asia and Latin America, she said.

Yesterday, the Catholic Economic Justice network staged a human chain protest against debt and called for justice in economic relationships internationally.

Among the actions planned by WSF-aligned organisations to highlight the appeal for the total scrapping of debt was a 40-day rolling fast from September ahead of this year's G8 summit in Berlin, Germany, and to call for transparent country debt audits worldwide.

Jubilee SA general secretary George Dorr said efforts to find out which debts the government was still servicing from the apartheid era were in vain.

Jubilee SA played a key role in adding a demand to the declaration for reparations. The NGO is helping apartheid victims with a multi-billion dollar lawsuit in the United States against multinationals they say aided and abetted the apartheid government.

More than 12 events on debt cancellation were held during the six-day event, analysing its origins, the need for reparations by former colonisers and the role it played in systemic poverty. More than a dozen organisations, NGOs and networks took part.