Research and background papers

• Eye of the Needle: The Africa debt report (a country by county analysis). Africa's economic development in the new millennium has been dominated by the debt crisis. Foreign indebtedness now poses a fatal impediment to Africa's development and the future prospects for many countries are daunting. At the end of 1998, annual debt service payments from Sub Saharan Africa, the world's poorest region, to the richest countries amounted to $15.2 billion or 15% of exports. The total debt currently stands at $231 billion.

• Shadowy Figures. The G7, IMF and World Bank - Globalisation and Debt. This Jubilee 2000 report by John Garrett and Ann Pettifor went to press as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank face unprecedented protests and demonstrations at their Annual Meetings in Prague. Both institutions are controlled by G7 finance ministers and their leaders; figures who prefer to remain in the shadows, while allowing their civil servants in Washington to become the focus for protest at the decisions of G7 leaders. (September 2000)

• New research shows that $600 billion in debt must be cancelled if poor countries are to have enough money to meet the poverty reduction targets confirmed at the United Nations Millennium Summit 6-8 September. A paper by Joseph Hanlon in Journal of International Development shows this will require much deeper debt cancellation than has been proposed so far, and that this debt must be cancelled if a "rights based approach” is taken. The paper also argues that using recent historic precedents, at least $1 trillion must be cancelled. Looking at historic precedent, the paper argues that “debt cancellation is the norm, not the exception.” (September 2000)

• G8 leaders run away to remote island as debt promises are broken, says new Jubilee 2000 report. (03 July 2000)
  

• Debt cancellation and the broken promise of Cologne. As the world's finance ministers gather in Washington for the Spring Meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, evidence is mounting that creditor nations are failing to deliver on promises they made last year to the world's poorest countries. Jubilee 2000 Coalition is warning the world's leaders of 'an emerging scandal' if urgent action is not taken. This briefing explains the current situation. (19 May 2000)

• Bread for the World provides an initial assessment of the implementation of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers thus far, with special attention to some Southern civil society perspectives on the same (April 2000)

• Kicking the Habit says that asking lenders to solve the debt crisis is like asking tobacco companies to curb smoking and calls for a new independent arbitration procedure for cancelling debts.

• Unfinished Business - the world's leaders and the millennium debt challenge. This report looks at the question of the cost of debt cancellation, and shows that creditors must and can afford to cancel poor country debts.

• Power Without Responsibility: the World Bank and Mozambican Cashew Nuts, by Joseph Hanlon. The background to way the World Bank made debt cancellation condtional on the closure of cashew nut processing factories and the loss of up to 10,000 jobs.

• What's Good for the United States Must be Good for the World: Professor Kunibert Raffer of the University of Vienna advocates an International Chapter 9 Insolvency as a fair and transparent method for cancelling unpayable debts.
  

• Zambia calls for debt relief to be based on "conditionalities from below, not conditionalities from above". A paper from the Zambia Jubilee 2000 setting out how resources from debt relief should be managed so as to ensure they benefit the poor.

• Odious Debts: Loose Lending, Corruption And The Third World's Environmental Legacy , by Patricia Adams (1991)
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  Patricia Adams analyzes the parts played in the debt crisis by the lenders including the World Bank and export credit agencies, and the borrowers, not only governments and state enterprises, but also the military and above all greedy and despotic leaders. Adams invokes the doctrine of odious debts - those debts contracted by a regime that are not binding for a nation- first used by the U.S. to repudiate Cuba's debts after it took Cuba from Spain.

• Basic data on the 92 poorest countries including statistics on debt, debt service due and paid, aid, per capita spending on health and education (including comparisons with spending on debt service), exports, population, GDP and UNDP human development index and rank. Data as of August 1999, based on most recent World Bank and UNDP reports issued in mid-1999.
  • notes and explanation (Please read first)
    
  • alphabetical order, plus Mexico & South Africa
    [Excel File] [HTML File 400k]
    
  • grouped by category – HIPC, Jubilee, etc
    [Excel File] [HTML File 400k]

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• There is a new World Bank HIPC web site which has useful tables, decision and completion point documents, and the Bank's own justifications of HIPC.

• A case for an international insolvency court. A JDRAD Discussion Paper prepared for the Annual IMF and World Bank Meetings in Washington, September 26-29, 1999

• Likely impact of Cologne Debt Initiative on Latin America (July 99)
  

• Details and interpretation of the Köln (Cologne) Debt Initiative

• Cologne Summit will offer 'crumbs of comfort' to the poorest countries on debt, according to new report (7 July 1999) Joseph Hanlon & John Garrett

• Unilateral action on debt cancellation. The Board of the UK Jubilee 2000 Coalition has called on Britain to take unilateral action on debt cancellation. The following paper examines the main arguments for the policy, considers the technical feasibility, and offers rebuttals for likely opposition to it. (June 1999) John Garrett

• Concordats for debt cancellation – A framework for rich creditors and poor debtors to negotiate debt cancellation. (March 1999) Ann Pettifor
  

• What will it cost to cancel the debt? Estimates of the cost of meeting Jubilee 2000's targets, including an estimate that debt service must be reduced by $75 billion per year if development targets are to be met. (March 1999) Joseph Hanlon
  

• Dictators and Debt. From the Philippines to Somalia, money has been lent to prop up dictators. This accounts for 22% of all poor country debt. Is it right to force repayment of that debt by the people who suffered under the dictators? (25 November 1998) Joseph Hanlon
  

• Latin America debt and the Asian crisis. (September 1998) Oscar Ugarteche, University of Peru. Espanol

• We’ve been here before. Debt and default are not new, and many of the present problems have happened before. (September 1998) Joseph Hanlon
  

• HIPC Heresies and the flat earth response: HIPC marks a radical change in economic principles, but the implementation in undermining those changes. (3 July 1998) Joseph Hanlon

• Paying twice for apartheid. The impact of apartheid-caused debt in southern Africa. (April 1998) Joseph Hanlon