Starting Out at Jubilee

SO, for those of you who want to know where I am working, I am interning at Jubilee USA, which is an organization which tries to get the debt of poor nations erased. Why, is that a good thing? Well, imagine that the United States had to pay off the national debt. Currently, we just have it sitting there and nobody is really making us pay anything except interest, which if we don't no one cares. BUT, African, Latin American, and Asian countries don't have the privilages associated with being a super power.

Countries like Liberia have large debts (many in the billions, but not hundreds of billions). However, the national budget of Liberia is not even near what it needs to be to pay off mere interest payments. The worst thing is that the debt was caused by the last two dictators to rule the country. Liberia has elected a woman president, and just come out of a very bloody civil war. Liberia especially needs to heal from the problems associated with war.

Liberian citizens do not receive social services like free or even reduced cost education. Basic social services are not available because there is no funding. People need medical attention and no one can afford it on their own. Unfortunately the government is spending most of its taxes on paying the banks (IMF, World Bank) which lent the money to dictators.

Jubilee takes the biblical message found in Leviticus that calls for debt forgiveness every 7 years, and a for a Jubilee celebration every 50 years, and applies it to forgiving debts of the Third World, a.k.a. the Global South. 2007 is a year of Jubilee and we are working to get a bill introduced in Congress to relieve the debt of numerous African countries.

I encourage you to Wikipedia the IMF and World Bank to get a better description, but baiscally all the countries that are members of the IMF and World Bank have to agree to forgive the debt of each country on an individual basis. Its like a vote in a board meeting. The US has the largest number of shares. In one of the banks we have 17% of the shares, and a vote of 85% is necessary to relieve the debt. Obviously our vote puts a lot towards the vote of reliving debt, but because we have 17% we could also vote no, and cause the measure to fall short of the 85% requirement. That is why the US position is so important. The US Treasury is who can tell the IMF and World Bank to relieve the debt, but the US Congress has the sway to influence the Treasury.

Its a long process, but because President Bush has done so much already to send money to Africa, and convince G8 countries to help out some, Congress could really get a lot of countries debts cancelled if they think that it is something the American people want.

Several thousand hearts are being made for Valentines Day to send to the Treasury, along with phone calls to the Treas. and letters to the editor in Congresspeople's local districts. I can give you more info on how to get involved leter, but so far this has been an interesting and exciting first week at work.

I will update more on this later, but now I need to go to bed.