As the short-term successor group to the highly successful Jubilee 2000 debt relief campaign prepares to bow out after this weekend's G8 summit in Genoa, its leader remains distinctly upbeat.
Not only will the struggle for a better deal for the world's poor carry on, but there is good reason to hope for another breakthrough on the debt issue within the next few months, Drop the Debt director Adrian Lovett said.
Drop the Debt was set up to carry forward to Genoa the momentum built up by Jubilee 2000 ahead of the millennium.
Jubilee 2000 pushed debt relief to the top of the international agenda, but did not achieve its aim of a complete write-off of the debts of the world's poorest countries.
"Drop the Debt was designed as a short-life, focussed thing because we tried to recapture the remaining millennium momentum that Jubilee 2000 stirred up and milk the last drips out of it," Lovett said in an interview.
Lovett was deputy to Jubilee 2000's charismatic leader Ann Pettifor and set up Drop the Debt, maintaining the support of rock stars Bono and Bob Geldof, whose backing has been key. The group has not achieved a major new breakthrough, but has been worthwhile nevertheless, he said.
"If we had not carried on, the whole process could easily have gone backwards from where we were at the end of last year.
"We have seen more countries come into the debt relief process and we have very much raised this whole question of whether the IMF and World Bank could do more and indeed whether what's being done is actually leaving countries in a sustainable position."
There are now 23 of the world's poorest countries in the so-called Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative which aims to reduce countries' debts to a sustainable level.
The Group of Seven rich countries -- Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the US -- have written off the bilateral debts owed to them as a result of the campaign but multilateral creditors such as the IMF and World Bank have not yet moved as far.
Countries in the HIPC process -- most of which are in sub-Saharan Africa -- have on average seen their actual debt payments so far fall by less than a third. That is a significant victory for debt campaigners but not enough.
Although Drop the Debt has been calling for another big move from the G8 (the G7 plus Russia) this weekend, Lovett admitted he was worried a breakthrough -- which would involve the G8 instructing the IMF and World Bank to move to 100 percent debt write-off -- was unlikely.
"There is a fatigue among the G8 around this issue. That is simply because they have talked about it before. That's a real danger for the G8 -- they get into this cycle of announcing new initiatives and completing none of them," said Lovett.
But, he continued, debt campaigners in the US had found a groundswell of support in the Bush administration.
Bush this week urged the World Bank and other development banks to make up to 50 percent of their cash disbursements to poor countries as grants rather than loans. That, he said, "does not merely drop the debt, it helps stop the debt."
But for the next few days at least, all Lovett's attention will be focussed on getting Drop the Debt's message across at Genoa without being associated with the violent protests that have become the norm at such international gatherings and are expected this time round. "Violence is not only morally unacceptable but tactically unacceptable because it diverts attention from the interests of the poorest people in the world that we and other groups are trying to raise," he said.
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique