Jubilee 2025
People of faith urge debt forgiveness for developing countries.
“More than 3.3 billion people live in countries that are spending more on debt payments than on health or education,” the petition begins, “standing in the way of sustainable development. We call on public, private and multilateral creditors, along with political leaders, to stop the debt crisis now.”
But this call for biblical justice – a year of Jubilee – might be falling short of its goal. The petition, part of a year-long campaign entitled Jubilee 2025: Turn Debt Into Hope, has struggled to gain the same momentum it did in 2000, when over $100 billion in debt was cancelled through the establishment of the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative at the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Twenty-five years ago, the Jubilee 2000 petition had more than 600,000 Canadian signatures, and pop culture figures such as U2’s Bono got involved. To date, the Canadian petition for the Jubilee 2025 campaign has only 41,000 signatures.
This past June, I attended the G7 Jubilee People’s Forum along with 100 other Canadians, ahead of the global leaders’ meeting in Kananaskis, Alberta. I was a Young Adult participant, bringing my concern for economic justice issues and my experience as a past participant in KAIROS programs. The four-day event was hosted in Calgary, led by Christian organizations including Development and Peace Caritas Canada, KAIROS, Citizens for Public Justice (CPJ), the Office of Religious Congregations for Integral Ecology and the Canadian Council of Churches. Together, we advocated for the cancellation of unjust global debts, structural changes to the global economic system and a binding UN debt resolution framework.
Private creditors & profit
Despite the success of Jubilee 2000, countries in the Global South are in great debt again, with developing countries owing over $31 trillion in debt and 3.6 billion people living in countries that spend more on interest repayments than on education and health care. Stuck in cycles of debt repayment, these countries are unable to develop and give their citizens better lives.
The Turn Debt into Hope campaign argues that these debts are not only crippling but also unjust in the first place. Many global creditors today are no longer other countries or the World Bank, as they were in the 1990s, but private creditors such as bonds and private banks. These groups are not under democratic control and pursue profit even when loans are not in the borrowing countries’ best interest or are unlikely to be paid back. In addition, debt cancellation through the HIPC, which Jubilee 2000 achieved, usually comes with economic conditions that privatize the debtor’s economy, leading to less government revenue and fewer public services for the country’s economic development.
This is the case for Zambia, an African country whose debt was significantly reduced through the HIPC after Jubilee 2000, but grew even larger than they were pre-2000 after the financial crash of 2008. This happened because copper, Zambia’s largest export, was mostly owned by foreign, private companies, so that much of the earnings from exporting copper ended up outside of Zambia. In addition, the IMF imposed a policy on Zambia that required it to spend only what it had in cash, which significantly curtailed the country’s ability to invest in its education and infrastructure. Because they had neither control of its own resources nor the ability to invest with a long-term strategy, Zambia was forced to borrow externally without the resources to pay its debts in the present or future.
Voices from around the world
The Jubilee People’s Forum acknowledged that today’s economic systems are complex. It is not easy to convince middle-class Canadians, who may be feeling the pinch of inflation, of the need for urgent action on issues of global poverty and injustice. To that end, Jubilee 2025 is increasing its outreach through education, advocacy and by highlighting diverse voices.
The Forum commenced with an interfaith service on Thursday night. Speakers from several Christian denominations brought their distinctive traditions to the issues of justice and Jubilee, and in partnership with the Calgary Interfaith Council, Thursday’s service included prayers, messages and songs from Sikh, Muslim, Bahai, Jewish and Unitarian Universalist representatives.
The service concluded with a langar meal, a Sikh tradition in which a free vegetarian meal is served to all. Attendees of the interfaith service sat together along rugs on the floor and were served with practiced hospitality out of enormous pots of steaming food. In a very tangible way, langar welcomed everyone as equal guests, preparing them to accept new experiences and ideas with humility and grace while providing an environment where it was easy to strike up a conversation with new people.
In addition to interfaith dialogue, the Forum was shaped by Global South perspectives, mirroring the central presence of speakers from the Philippines, Guatemala and Kenya at the online webinar, which launched the Jubilee 2025 campaign in February. At the Forum, many Global South partners spoke, including Cardinal Pedro Baretto, a Peruvian Catholic cardinal who has long defended human and environmental rights in South America. Cardinal Baretto spoke movingly about ecological debt, where the environmental damage caused by the Global North is felt most keenly by people in the Global South, particularly when their poverty, exacerbated by unjust economic systems, leaves them vulnerable. “Financial and ecological debt today represent two profoundly intertwined dimensions,” he said, “to the point that they are –” in the words of Pope Francis – “‘two sides of the same coin, mortgaging the future.’”
Ecological debt and external debt are two sides of the same coin that mortgages the future.
Pope Francis
Indigenous peoples were also a key part of the Forum. Elders from the Stoney Nakoda, Siksika and Tsuutina nations welcomed participants throughout the weekend, and Forum participants travelled to Stoney Nakoda land outside of Calgary for a prayer circle focused on justice and reconciliation. This was one of the most meaningful parts of the Forum for me. After days of intense learning, the opportunity to pray beside the Bow River under a sky that stretched to the Rocky Mountains was a reminder that our calls for Jubilee and justice are rooted in our love for the land and our neighbor.
