JULIAN FILOCHOWSKI'S SPEECH ON BEHALF OF AGENCIES AT JUBILEE 2000 CELEBRATION

2nd December 2000

It's a great honour to have been asked to speak here today on behalf of all the agencies that have been part of the UK Jubilee 2000 campaign.

It's an honour because this is a campaign like no other.

We have all been part of a movement that is not only inter-denominational. It is a movement that is inter-faith. It is a campaign made up of people and organisations of all faiths and of none.

Let me say on behalf of the agencies, we pay special tribute to the staff of the Jubilee 2000 secretariat. They have shown unswerving dedication to this cause and have played a central role in making this the best known and most widely supported campaign in the world.

I want also to pay special tribute to Ann Pettifor. Her energy and determination has helped focus people as far apart as those in the White House in Washington to those in African villages.

But I think Ann, the Jubilee 2000 secretariat and certainly the organisations that co-founded Jubilee 2000, all recognise that this campaign, has been a campaign of ordinary people.

- ordinary people have meant that jubilee 2000 has broken the record for the world's largest petition.

- against all expectations, it is they that have forced the issue on to the agenda of the G7 meetings of the world's most powerful countries.

- in their millions they reached out with unbreakable determination in solidarity with the poorest people in the world's poorest countries.

All of our supporters and all the organisations of the coalition have been united in the common belief – that there is a stark and continuing gross injustice at the heart of the international financial system.

When some of our agencies were campaigning on this issue as far back as the 1980s, we were continually faced with the repeated claims from the world's most powerful decision-makers that this was a problem that would resolve itself.

We were assured that if the right conditions were in place the problem of over-indebtedness would just go away.

Above all, we were told that it was not a humanitarian issue.

We were told that it was an issue of cast-iron laws of economics.

But it has been ordinary supporters and campaigners who have seen through those assurances.

• Ordinary supporters have refused to accept that you can separate good economics from commonsense and social justice.

They have campaigned against the conditions for debt relief set by creditors that requires the poorest of the poor to pay for an education and for life-saving medical treatment.

• It has been ordinary men, women and children that have seen this as an issue of social justice.

They have questioned a system of indebtedness where those who have the least, required to keep paying to those who already have the most.

• Jubilee 2000 campaigners have seen this issue as an issue of the rights of humanity.
• They have questioned - and still question - a system that gives partial debt relief while leaving countries paying more to their creditors than on their children's health or education.
• And while Gordon Brown is here, I can say we are grateful to the British government, and you in particular, for taking such a decisive lead on this issue in international gatherings.
• But we cannot let creditor governments stop here. While the year 2000 might fall from our Jubilee banners.
• Let no one be in any doubt that while Jubilee 2000 will end this year, the Jubilee campaigns continue tomorrow and we will continue in the days, months and years – and for as long as it takes - until we resolve this affront to our humanity.
• We cannot stop campaigning and sit back content with a HIPC debt relief scheme that is still cancelling only about half of the debt servicing payments of less than half the world's indebted countries.
• We cannot be content with the current debt relief scheme that, this very week, is leaving a country like Zambia actually paying more in debt-servicing after it has received its debt cancellation.
• Cannot be content with a scheme that is offering no relief for countries still punished by immiserating debt like Nigeria, Vietnam and Bangladesh.
• And we cannot and will not finish our work while those that are having some of their debts cancelled are still left paying more in debt servicing than on health or education.

So the agencies will be working hand in glove with the Drop the Debt campaign led by Adrian Lovett in the run up to the Genoa meeting of the G7 heads of government meeting in June next year.

But our efforts do not stop at Genoa. We agencies are all absolutely committed to campaigning and struggling to cancel debt beyond that. We will continue to engage in advocacy work, in media work, in policy work, in campaigning and supporting grass roots campaigns here in the UK and with our international partners overseas, for as long as it takes until we see the world's poor set free from this bondage of unpayable debt.

That is why we are combining together in a Jubilee Debt Network so that we will continue campaigning – not only on debt, but also campaigning against the causes of debt.

We will campaign for a change to the conditions for debt relief that forbids indebted governments from supporting their farmers.

We will campaign against the exclusion of exports from the poorest countries being sold here in Europe and the world's richest markets.

We will be campaigning against a system of debt relief that forces debtor countries to open up their markets so that producers from the north can dump their food mountains and undercut local producers in the south.

We want also to campaign against a grossly unequal trading system. We want a trading system that leaves low-income countries forever borrowing to pay for essential imports.

So we want a campaign that both champions the cause of debt cancellation

And a campaign that fights the causes of indebtedness.

Lastly, none of this can come about unless we increase all our efforts. And so I want to ask you to make a commitment now. Come to Genoa in July next year. Come to the city where the leaders of the G7 summit are meeting. Come and bear witness. Come and make your voice heard.

Come to Genoa and say you want to see a breakthrough that will allow us all to begin this 21st century anew and make it a very different century to the last one.

And finally, come to Genoa so that the world's most powerful leaders will understand that when we say we want total cancellation of the unpayable debts of the world's poorest countries, we mean just that –

Total cancellation – 100% ! Thank you.