Victory for Haiti Debt Cancellation!

by Hayley Hathaway 02-08-2010

For those of us who work for social justice, victory can seem elusive. But then there are times when we mobilize at the right time with the right message and our leaders cannot help but listen and respond.

This weekend was one of those times.

Last week I wrote explaining that Haiti’s $700 million debt to the international financial institutions must be cancelled as an urgent step in recovery and as a matter of justice.

In the wake of Haiti’s catastrophic earthquake, people of conscience in the U.S. and around the globe mobilized to call on our leaders to do the right thing for Haiti. On Friday, U.S. Treasury Secretary Geithner responded to that call, announcing: “Today, we are voicing our support for what Haiti needs and deserves – comprehensive multilateral debt relief.”

I couldn’t agree more. On Saturday, the news got even better when the Group of Seven (G7) finance ministers announced that they agreed with him – Haiti wouldn’t have to pay back its debts.

This is truly a victory for Haiti, where massive debt payments have long forced the country into underdevelopment.

This is also a win for debt campaigners and people of faith and conscience around the world. Fifteen years ago, the U.S. Treasury Secretary never would have uttered what Geithner said on Friday. It would have been considered crazy to cancel Haiti’s debts to help it recover. Debt was sacred; countries had to pay their debts before anything else — before clean water, education, or health. Yet thanks to a growing call from people of faith around the world who believed in scripture’s vision of debt cancellation and restoration of right relations between nations, the Jubilee movement was born. In 1999, 70,000 people made a human chain in Scotland calling for debt relief. Leaders responded with the first global comprehensive debt cancellation plan.

This weekend, the Jubilee vision manifested again in hundreds of thousands of petitions sent by Jubilee USA, ONE, Avaaz, and Oxfam to the Arctic Circle at the G-7. Again, our leaders listened.

To date, over $100 billion of debt has been cancelled in dozens of countries to help fight poverty and injustice. Dozens more need debt cancellation right now. Haiti’s victory this weekend is one part of a larger struggle to create a world where countries no longer have to get into debt to feed their people, where democratic governments don’t have to pay debts from colonialism or brutal regimes. To Mr. Geithner I say, Well done. And we still have more work to do.

In the coming weeks, as the snow in D.C. melts, as the Secretary returns to his comfortable home, and the immediacy of Haiti’s need fades off the pages of the newspaper, let us lift up Haiti’s debt cancellation as an important step for the country and for world. And continue to turn the Jubilee vision into a reality.

Hayley Hathaway is operations & communications coordinator for the Jubilee USA Network.

Categories: Activism, Economics, Global Issues, Poverty

fundamentalist

I thought I provided evidence in my post above.

fundamentalist

Yes. What's your point?

Wonder

Do either the OT or the NT command that the victims of theft be punished for the crime?

fundamentalist

No. Following sound hermeneutical principles, I take the principle of the OT laws and not the letter. One principle is the sanctity of property. Another is helping the poor. We should follow both without requiring the implementation of the literal Mosaic law in exactly the way God required Israel to do. For example, instead of cancelling debts during the year of Jubilee, we have bankruptcy laws. Instead of gleenings, we have charities.

Does the NT not consider theft and fraud crimes as well as the OT?

Wonder

So you agree farmers shouldn't double harvest their fields so that poor people and immigrants are ensured of at least a few bites to eat as they pass through?

And that laws should be in place to prevent unjust lending practices?

That individual debts should be cancelled every decade or so?

how very... traditional of you

Wonder

@fundamentalist
Is it too much to ask that a Christian(see what I did there, not denying your existence or faith by saying you 'claim' to be a Christian) not accuse a fellow Christian of breaking one of the 10 commandments, merely because you disagree with their opinion?

If the author's assertion is demonstrably inaccurate, no doubt you can cite evidence.

If not, who is "bearing false witness?"

fundamentalist

Have you read "Money, Greed and God" by Jay Richards? It's very good. He has a story about Haiti in it in which he writes "In Haiti, you have to jump through 65 bureaucratic hoops just to lease land from the government. Buying the land? Another 111 hoops. It would take a diligent Haitian nineteen years to pull this off, assuming he could get the time off from work, if he has work. And the fact that he's acquired property legally doesn't necessarily mean that his situation won't change tomorrow, since the country itself frequently changes owners."

His point is that the lack of property rights and the impossibility of getting clear title to land makes development absolutely impossible. Of course, getting title would be easier if you had the money to bribe thousands of officials to speed up the process, but then your title is only secure until someone bribes the same officials to steal you land.

Until Haiti completely re-writes its laws and starts protecting private property, no one will invest in Haiti and without investment no one will have jobs. It's simply wilfull blindness on the part of some to lay all of the blame on debt.

fundamentalist

"Isn't China still a communist country? And doesn't it still depend a great deal on manipulation by the government?"

Yes and no. Yes, it is still communist. No, the economy does not depend on manipulation by the government. The government destroyed the wealth in China to the point that 30 million people starved to death in the 1960's. The US kept more from starving by loaning China trillions to buy our food for its people. Then in the early 1980's the Chinese created small islands of free markets and over the next 30 years lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty. Most of the industry is still state-owned and wasting trillions of dollars because they all lose money. The small private sector is totally responsible for the poverty reduction in the country.

"I'd also say that it's dangerous to make a system an idol..."

It's dangerous to make anything an idol. I'm certainly not doing it.

"To argue that capitalism is the only way to social justice puts money before God."

Not at all. It puts God first. God wrote the rules for how people should treat each other in the marketplace and concerning each person's property. Nations that respect God's law regarding property prosper; those who don't keep their people in desperate poverty.

NC77

Bankrucptcy relieves a person or organization of repaying their debts, and makes it difficult to borrow more money until a certain time has passed or other conditions of the bankruptcy are met.

Going forward. Let's hope Haiti does not borrow more money that it cannot repay (regardless of the reason). Rather let's hope that nations working with Haiti to rebuild are able to fund the work with money that is given not borrowed.

If the government remains corrupt, then let's bypass the government as best as we can and let those seeking righteousness thrive.

Jesusistheway

Isn't China still a communist country? And doesn't it still depend a great deal on manipulation by the government? China is bent on one thing: to be the economic Goliath of the world. Meanwhile, in spite of state-sponsored torture and other punishments, millions of Christians have put their faith in Christ there.

I'd also say that it's dangerous to make a system an idol, be it socialism, communism, capitalism, or any other ism. To argue that capitalism is the only way to social justice puts money before God. And Jesus had plenty to say about that...

jjernig2

I agree. It's not a total fix but it is one less burden the country has to deal with. The rest is up to the people of Haiti.

bryan_85

let's all just be happy that the debt is cancelled :)
they are giving a clean slate just like when Jesus gives us a clean slate daily.
praise the Lord!

fundamentalist

"World poverty is falling. This column presents new estimates of the world’s income distribution and suggests that world poverty is disappearing faster than previously thought. From 1970 to 2006, poverty fell by 86% in South Asia, 73% in Latin America, 39% in the Middle East, and 20% in Africa. Barring a catastrophe, there will never be more than a billion people in poverty in the future history of the world.." http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/4508.

How has this happened? With debt forgiveness and aid? Not at all! As nations abandoned traditional, corrupt forms of government and socialism and adopted small measures of capitalism by freeing their markets a tiny amount, their people became wealthier. It's amazing what following God's principles on private property will do.

fundamentalist

Corruption causes poverty. There is plenty of evidence for that.

Corrupt rulers sign loan agreements in the name of the people and everyone knows that the people will pay back those loans by taxing the people.

Yes, it is Christ-like to forgive debt. But debt reduction alone will none change anything in Haiti.

fundamentalist

Zeal is wonderful, but as Paul wrote it needs knowledge to be effective. Doing the same thing over and over again expecting better results is a form of insanity.

To claim that God can't work in Haiti without debt relief seems to be the blasphemous part to me. What does debt relief have to do with the power of God?

God has effected real change in the world. Look at China. Hundreds of millions of people were lifted out of the worst poverty on the planet. As recently as the 1960's 30 million people starved to death from famine. Some resorted to cannibalism. And the Chinese had no debt relief, even though the US had loaned them trillions of dollars in the 1970's and 1980's to feed their people.

Don't get me wrong. I don't mind forgiving Haiti's debt. But based on past experience with similar debt forgiveness it won't do what people think it will do. It amazes me that people never lose faith in failed policies no matter how many times they fail. It seems to me that Christians should be the first to abandon failure and learn what does work. Wouldn't something that worked be so much better than plodding along with the same failed strategies hoping the God will perform a miracle and turn failure into success?

mlowpaterson

Although I see where fundamentalist is coming from, I agree with hikerrev.

Anyway, it's only part of the 'solution', or rather, one step in the right direction.

Jesusistheway

I'd love to hear from the libertarians their perspective on how to help the world's poor. It seems they spend so much energy wanting to protect their own liberties and wealth that there isn't much left for "the least of these."

duhsciple

Is corruption the cause of poverty or the result of it?

Who is responsible for paying debt, corrupt rulers and their loan giving allies? Or the people ruled by the corrupt rulers who had no say in the matter?

What is more Christ-like, advocating debt relief for those flattened by an earthquake, or telling squashed people they have to pay up?

hikerrev

@fundamentalist

Maybe. But personally I can't maintain that opinion, because I'd just remain mired myself in the despair of hopelessness; and if our Christian tradition holds on to anything beyond Jesus Christ, it has to be the hope of new life ~ even if it's hope for new life for those in Haiti and elsewhere who could really benefit from a new life right now.

So I hold on to hope that debt forgiveness really does make a difference, and I will continue to advocate for debt relief and for making a difference in the lives of the poorest among us; to do otherwise, from my perspective, would be to blaspheme, to deny the power of God to effect real change in the world.

fundamentalist

“Debt was sacred; countries had to pay their debts before anything else – before clean water, education, or health.”

That was never true. Is it too much to ask of people who claim to be Christians that they refrain from bearing false witness?

The IMF has done most of the lending to states since WWII. That’s why it was set up. But if nations didn’t repay their low interest (subsidized) loans, then it would be more difficult to get more loans. That’s just common sense. The IMF was foolish enough to believe that the repayments would force dictators to reduce corruption and grow the economy so that they could pay back the loans. But dictators loved the loans because they could steal most of the money and they didn’t care about the poor. Then when the dictator couldn’t repay the loans, they would typically scream that the IMF is taking the food out of the mouths of children.

The IMF and the social justice crowds as such suckers for corrupt dictators. The debt forgiveness for Haiti won’t make any difference to poor Haitians at all. They never benefited from the loans and they won’t benefit from loan forgiveness. All the loan forgiveness will do is clear the books so that the corrupt dictators of Haiti can borrow more from the IMF and World Bank steal more.