Readings
OPINION End the slavery of debt- Herald Sun
18/05/2008
IMAGINE if every Australian child were given a credit card bill they could never pay, thanks to interest rates and job prospects, writes Hugh Evans.
Sound unlikely?
Every child in Africa is born with a financial burden that a lifetime's work cannot repay.
They are caught in an inescapable debt trap through no fault of their own.
International debt is slavery in the modern era.
Indebted nations are unable to improve the lives of their own citizens.
Large percentages of their limited national budgets are spent repaying old debts to the world's richest countries.
Rising interest gives these nations little hope of ever being debt-free.
Mozambique spends 10 times more on repaying debt interest than on health care.
Likewise, Zambia spends five times more on debt interest than it does on education.
Closer to home, more than half of the world's poor live in our region, and many of them are languishing in poverty because of debt repayments.
Australia is owed more than $1 billion by Indonesia, $185 million by the Philippines and about $80 million by Sri Lanka.
Millions of dollars are also owed by Papua New Guinea, Nepal and the Solomon Islands.
Indonesia and the Philippines have to spend between one quarter and more than one half of their national budgets on repaying international debt rather than on improving the lives of their poor.
And in 2005, much of the Australian Government's generous contribution to Indonesia after the Boxing Day tsunami was made up of loans that will have to be repaid.
Money lent to Indonesia during the 1970s, '80s and '90s went to corrupt dictators, particularly the Suharto regime.
There is also strong reason to believe that much of the Filipino loans were lost to corruption.
It is still unknown how much of these borrowed funds actually benefited the average Indonesian, Filipino or Sri Lankan.
More recently, we have witnessed a similar situation in Iraq under Saddam Hussein.
These debts were entered into without the consent of the people; but it is the people, not the former leaders, who are now suffering.
We should not hold the poor of these nations responsible for the dishonesty of their former leaders and our poor judgment.
At the G8 meeting in July 2005, world leaders agreed to immediately cancel the debt of the world's 18 poorest countries.
While this was certainly a sensible and generous action, too many other poor nations are beleaguered by debt.
The lives of 30,000 children could be saved if the remaining debt of poor countries were cancelled and they were free to put the money towards basic health, education, sanitation and housing.
In many instances, the effects of debt are no less devastating than those of war.
Debt relief has the power to change the lives of the world's poor.
After being relieved of its international debt, Tanzania was able to abolish primary school fees. In one year, between 2002 and 2003, enrolment increased by 50 per cent, hundreds of teachers were trained, and an extra 1000 schools built.
An amazing 1.6 million children were able to attend school for the first time.
The comparatively small amount of debt relief has had incredible results, including doubling school enrolment in Uganda, vaccinating 500,000 children in Mozambique, and adding three more years of schooling for Honduran children.
It is time for Australia to cancel the international debt owed by our poorest neighbours and break the poverty cycle of loan repayments and rising interest.
Australia can only benefit from improved conditions in neighbouring countries.
Stability will help to discourage refugees, civil war, sectarian strife and terrorism.
By cancelling debt, our Government will be investing in the future of our neighbours and of our region.
HUGH EVANS is director of the Oaktree Foundation and a co-coordinator of the Make Poverty History Zero Seven Road Trip from July 1 to 7.
