UNDP Special adviser dedicates prize to Jubilee 2000

A highly respected United Nations adviser has dedicated a prestigious peace award to Jubilee 2000.

Richard Jolly, special adviser to the Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme, was presented with the Rome Prize for Peace and Humanitarian Action which he has dedicated to the International Jubilee 2000 movement. The award reinforced Rome's position as a leading city in the global campaign – as both the City of Rome and the Pope have made strong public calls for the cancellation of debt by the year 2000 – and added further moral weight to the call for debt cancellation in the millennium.

In a strongly-worded speech, Mr Jolly called the international debt of the poorest countries “intolerable, unpayable, immoral and inexcusable.” He argued that the debt in the poorest countries is intolerable because the burden continues to grow for the poorest countries and violates human rights because of the diversion of resources from health and education to debt service.

He said: “The debt burden is like the stone which Sisyphus, the ancient figure of ancient mythology, was required to roll to the top of the mountain. Every time Sisyphus got near the peak, the stone would roll back and Sisyphus would start again. In the same way, the poorest countries are required each year to pay interest and repay capital on their debt, but ... the debt burden ... has been growing heavier each year.”

He called for urgent debt cancellation. “The moral hazard of debt forgiveness has become an immoral certainty of human suffering.” He cited the injustice of the absence of international bankruptcy law which means that no limits are set on the amount a creditor can claim each year from the debtor and which requires people to pay the debts incurred by unelected dictators.

He went on to call for the support of the “Jubilee call to end the stranglehold of debt on impoverished people” and the rapid mobilisation of people around the issue.

“Jim Grant of UNICEF used to say. `Look around you. We are all rather ordinary people – but united, we can achieve miracles.'

All of us – and groups like us in every country – need to unite in support of the call for rapid debt reduction for the poorest countries. Such action could open the way for miracles of human development in the 21^st century. “

• For a full copy of the speech