BONO'S NEW YEAR MESSAGE

 

 Jubilee 2000 Coalition

So there it was, the big Millennium wave washed over us and where are we in its wake? Is the water any warmer? Probably not. But it's 2000 and we've got a whole new pond to splash around in. It's big and it needs a big idea to fill it. The good news is, we've got one.

The idea is Jubilee 2000: debt cancellation for the world's poorest countries. It's a big idea, because if it continues to catch on over the next year it will substantively touch the lives of about a billion people, the poorest of the poor, those living on less than a dollar a day.

In 1999 a principle was established that forever alters the relationship between the developed and developing worlds. That principle made flesh in the words and actions of the world's leaders after the Cologne G8 summit last year, decries the repayment of old loans above the feeding, educating, inoculating of a destitute people.

If those world leaders can turn rhetoric into reality - and the IMF and World Bank make good on their promises - over $100 billion in debt relief will have been agreed, subject to strict conditions. Jubilee 2000 would like twice that, but for now we're celebrating. A movement not given much hope less than a year ago has not just raised consciousness - it has raised the stakes to sums previously unimagined.

Jubilee 2000 has been successful for a few reasons. There's the date. It's a one off. The hysteria has reached its zenith. It demands a big bang, a big tent. But without a big idea, it's hubris and hangovers we're all waking up with, not a new dawn... There's its breadth of support; from Pope John Paul to Muhammad Ali, Tanzania to Bolivia, from Harvard to The Prodigy and Youssou N'Dour.

Above all, Jubilee 2000 has defined this as a justice issue. A lot of these loans shouldn't have been made in the first place, but kept dictators on side in line with old cold war strategies, par example Mobutu in Zaire. We had to explain the campaign in terms of self interest (for the West), in a global economy we're interdependent whether we like it or not. Misery causes conflict, war is expensive. Preventative measures are cheaper in the end.

And cancelling debt is sound economics when the debt is bad and the debtor is bankrupt. What every moneyman knows... “If your horse falls down and dies, we suggest you dismount”.

In the US we took a pragmatic approach and beat out the argument with economists and politicians before we had established what Bill Clinton later referred to as our `big tent', the threat of pop stars and popes combined. I personally door-stepped such mythic figures on the economic landscape as Paul Volker, David Rockefeller, Pete Peterson, Robert Rubin and his successor as Treasury Secretary Larry Summers. They let me in. Professor Jeffrey Sachs had half of Harvard crunching the numbers. His zeal was contagious. Larry Summers made the overtures and in the end, Bill Clinton is a star. He saw the light, took out his saxophone and played. By September, he had moved the American position from 90% debt forgiveness to the unspinnable 100%.

Meanwhile in London, the British were catching on ... With Live Aid's Bob Geldof in their ear and church groups blowing trumpets outside the Treasury... the bureaucratic walls were crumbling. Bold and brave moves were made and now the UK, US and Canada have claimed the lead on this issue.

Now is the time for the rest of the G7 and other major lenders to respond. Lionel Jospin has steered France on a steady course and surprised those who thought he would lead his country back to the 1970s. The French have never been afraid of the Big Idea - and they have never forgotten the historical ties that bind them to some of the poorest parts of the world.

In Germany, Gerhard Schröder has domestic worries but if he can see above them, I believe he too has the will to join Clinton and Blair. After all, Germany's resurgence in the last century was cemented by the kind of post-war debt write-off that today's post-conflict countries can only dream of.

Italy can do this too. Pope John Paul II has made this issue his personal moral crusade. Perhaps most important of all is Japan, the new chair of the Group of Seven. Keizo Obuchi can be the man who steers the G7 down the path of promises to reality.

Of course these are not the only lenders. Most of the rest of the debt is owed to the IMF and the World Bank. We need more from these institutions. The President of the World Bank Jim Wolfensohn is a passionate man. I believe he will go the distance if the Politicians let him... The Politicians will let him if we keep telling them.

So much to do in 2000...

1999 was the most extraordinary year for me. I swapped sunglasses for rosary beads with the Pope, tantrums and tiaras for a bowler hat and briefcase and war stories with David Rockefeller at the top of his Center in New York. On the street though, it has given me faith in the rank and file protester, and, I have to humbly admit, in the politicians who respond to them.

Copyright Bono 1999

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