This is from the Guardian
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Poor nations' rights are wronged
Larry Elliott
Monday April 3, 2000
There are many irritating aspects to the so-called Third Way, but what
particularly grates is its endless capacity to spawn meaningless
catchphrases. Right up there when it comes to vacuity is "rights and
responsibilities", the notion that in a something-for-something world you
only have rights if you show responsibility.
The philosopher kings of the Third Way are inordinately fond of this phrase,
and there is no doubt that it sounds fine in theory. Translating the theory
into practice is quite a different matter. There was no sign, for example, of
any Third Way guru in Birmingham on Saturday to explain "rights and
responsibilities" to those protesting about what has happened at Longbridge.
As far as the Rover workers are concerned, you don't need to be a philosopher
king to understand that in a world of footloose capital, BMW has the rights
and Rover workers bear the responsibility.
An even more egregious example of the shortcomings of "rights and
responsibilities" comes from the failure of the rich creditor nations and the
multilateral institutions to make good their pledges on debt relief. With a
few striking exceptions, developing countries have put their economies in
order, have pledged to use debt relief on anti-poverty programmes, and have
agreed to independent auditing to ensure that funds do not end up in Swiss
bank accounts. So, plenty of responsibility. Now they expect something in
return.
Sadly, this is not happening. Amid an orgy of self-congratulation last year,
world leaders announced that the original heavily indebted poor country
initiative was too limited and too slow. The answer was HIPC2, which would be
faster, more generous and apply to more countries. But nine months on from
the Cologne G7 summit and six months after the details were sorted out at the
annual meetings of the World Bank and the IMF, it is clear that the souped-up
HIPC2 looks very much like HIPC1.
In Britain, at least, alarm bells have started to ring. At the end of last
year, the chancellor, Gordon Brown, said he hoped to see four countries
through HIPC2 by the end of January, 11 by Easter and 26 by the end of the
year. Not a single country had been granted debt relief by the end of
January, only three have received it now and a maximum of five will have been
processed by the time of the spring meeting of the World Bank and the IMF
later this month. Brown and Clare Short, the development secretary, accept
that at the present rate of progress there is not a chance of getting
two-thirds of the 41 eligible countries into the process by the end of the
year.
Brown and Short are not to blame for this. Indeed, Britain's record on debt
relief - under the Conservatives as well as Labour - has been admirable. The
real problem is in Washington, where the attempts of the US treasury to throw
sand in the wheels of the HIPC process are being aided by the institutional
torpor and rigidity of the World Bank and the IMF. As an added complication,
it is Japan's turn to chair the G7 this year, and Tokyo had to be dragged
kicking and screaming into supporting HIPC2.
The danger now is that the whole process starts to unravel. Japan has put a
miserly $10m into the HIPC trust fund, which is supposed to be raising cash
so that the World Bank and the regional development banks can write off their
share of the debts owed by some of the world's poorest countries. The Clinton
administration has only managed to persuade Congress to stump up two-thirds
of the $600m pledged by the White House last year, and until it does the
European Union will not release the $1bn it agreed to find from the European
development fund.
Later this month, there will be an op portunity for another bout of
rich-country grandstanding at the UN conference on education in Senegal, when
fountain pens will be flourished with élan so that politicians can sign up to
targets for ensuring primary education for every child on the planet by 2015.
But at the moment this looks like a case of putting the cart a long way
before the horse.
Debt relief is obviously not the only factor necessary for developing
countries to build up a basic social infrastructure, but it is a key
ingredient in any realistic package. As the UN secretary general Kofi Annan
says today: "Let us be clear that without a convincing programme of debt
relief to start the new millennium, our objective of halving world poverty by
2015 will be only a pipe dream."
Dying on its feet
Jubilee 2000 says that the five countries that will have scraped through
HIPC2 by Easter - Uganda, Bolivia, Mauritania, Mozambique and Tanzania - will
have had their debt burden reduced by 40% on average rather than the 90-100%
write off that was promised. The quintet will still be paying more than half
a billion dollars every year to foreign creditors - almost as much as they
spend on healthcare. Uganda has one of the highest levels of HIV infection in
the world, which has already orphaned 1m children. In Bolivia, 60% of the
population has no access to basic sanitation; Mauritania has an adult
literacy rate of 62%. Everybody knows what has been happening in Mozambique.
Try telling the people there about rights and responsibilities.
Finding a way out of this mess does not require rocket science. Clare Short
has been warning for months that the HIPC2 process has been dying on its feet
because countries are being forced to submit absurdly detailed anti-poverty
programmes before they secure debt relief. She says that all countries need
at the outset is a rudimentary road map, and that the rest can be inked in
later.
The Americans seem intent on slowing up HIPC2 at every turn. While the
Clinton administration has made the right noises about debt relief publicly,
inside the Bank and the IMF it has been pernickety about conditions that
countries will have to abide by if they are to receive debt relief, arguing
that states should have poverty reduction plans in place for a year before
anything happens.
Campaigners say that one of the other great breakthroughs proclaimed last
year - full consultation with civil society over poverty reduction strategy
papers (PRSP) - has proved to be a bit of a joke. "The IMF told Mozambique
and Mauritania that they could obtain rapid approval for debt relief under
HIPC only if they did not put the PRSP out for public consultation."
As things stand, only 14 countries are likely to qualify for HIPC2 debt
relief this year. Clearly this is nowhere near good enough, and it is now
time for the Jubilee 2000 campaign, the churches and the others to help Brown
and Short put pressure on the laggards among the G7 later this month.
Annan will throw his full weight behind the campaign to speed-up HIPC2 today,
with a call for donor countries and the international financial institutions
to consider wiping off their books all official debts of the heavily indebted
poor countries in return for those countries making demonstrable commitments
to poverty reduction. He will also outline a new approach under which there
would be immediate cancellation of the debts owed by countries that have
suffered major conflicts or natural disasters, expanding the number of
countries in the HIPC scheme by allowing them to qualify on grounds of
poverty alone, pegging debt repayments at a maximum percentage of foreign
exchange earnings, and establishing a debt arbitration process to balance the
interests of creditors and sovereign debtors and introduce greater discipline
into their relations.
But none of this will happen without political will. Now is the time for some
real leadership that accepts that everybody has the right to clean water,
basic healthcare and an education, and those with the power and financial
clout have a responsibility to ensure that they get them.
hkanteh
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