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KAIROS Co-Convenes Illegitimate Debt Tribunal
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KAIROS: Canadian Ecumenical Justice Initiatives, is a coalition of Canadian churches, church based agencies, religious communities and religious organizations dedicated to promoting human rights, justice, peace, and viable human development. KAIROS is a decisive and faithful response to God's call for respect for the Earth and justice for its people.
KAIROS carries forward the work of 10 previously independent coalitions including: ECEJ (the Ecumenical Coalition for Economic Justice), ICCAF (Inter-Church Coalition on Africa) and ICCHRLA (Inter-Church Committee on Human Rights in Latin America). In doing, so KAIROS brings under one banner nearly thirty years of research, policy development, advocacy, and grassroots mobilization on issues of economic justice; in particular, research and advocacy on international debt, the policies of International Financial Institutions (IFIs) and the impact of those policies on the world's most marginalized populations.
Since the 1980s, the debt burden of Southern countries has hugely exacerbated the gap between rich and poor, with countries forced to pay in interest many times the amount they initially borrowed. In 1980 the total debt of the world's poorer nations totalled US $568 billion. By 1997, the South had transferred US $2.9 trillion to northern creditors in principal and interest and yet their debt had more than tripled, to over US $2 trillion. For every $1 that northern countries provide in aid, over $3 comes back in debt service payments. Moreover, to finance their debt, countries were required to adopt structural adjustment policies intended to create a favourable climate for foreign investment. These included privatizing public services, removing labour regulations and capital controls, cutting taxes and cutting back on all government and social spending - including spending on health, the environment and education.
As these disparities grow increasingly scandalous, the demand for a more equitable sharing of the world's wealth has become a clarion call for those seeking economic justice. Since 1997, the International Jubilee Debt Campaign has worked for the cancellation of Southern debt and an end to the policy conditions which the international lending institutions have attached to the debt relief measures they implemented. The Jubilee initiative took as its model the biblical tradition which holds that every fifty years God calls for a year of Jubilee. A jubilee year was a time when lands were returned, debts forgiven and the fields left fallow to redress inequality and to signal that only God owns and distributes the resources of Creation.
Over the intervening years, as we strengthened ties with other
Jubilee Movements, in particular Jubilee South, the perspectives
and policies of the Canadian Jubilee movement on debt and the behaviour
of IFIs have evolved. We have jointly developed policy positions
on a number of issues including the legitimacy of debt. Together
with Jubilee South we have developed criteria that can be used to
characterize illegitimate debt. These include: fraudulent debts,
debts that cannot be serviced without causing harm to peoples or
communities and debts incurred at usurious rates of interest. In
calling for an assessment of debt legitimacy, we also demand the
outright cancellation of debts found to be illegitimate.
KAIROS belongs to the South-North Working Group on the Illegitimacy
of Debt created in December 2000 at the Jubilee Debt Conference,
in Dakar. The Working Group was formed to examine ways to raise
the profile of the illegitimate debt concept and to organize an
international campaign for its cancellation. Out of that examination
came the International Peoples' Tribunal on Illegitimate Debt to
be held February 1-2, 2002, at the World Social Forum, in Porto
Alegre, Brasil. The Tribunal will launch Jubilee South's Global
Campaign on Illegitimate Debt and KAIROS joins Jubilee South and
others as a co-convener.
The Tribunal will hear testimony outlining the ethical, juridical, social and political case for illegitimate debt cancellation. The proceedings will help to illustrate the nature, dynamics and consequences of debt domination and shape our understanding of the role debt plays in the globalization of our current economic regime.
In addition to co-convening the Tribunal, KAIROS will bring back
the witnesses' testimony, along with the jury's findings and verdict,
to share widely with Canadians as part of our Turning
the Tables campaign leading up to next June's G8 meeting
in Kananskis. The International People's Tribunal on Illegitimate
Debt and the Turning the Tables campaign offer KAIROS a key moment
to reinvigorate the Jubilee call for debt eradication, for changes
to the policies and structures of the world's International Financial
Institutions and for a transformation to a more equitable and human
global economic regime. Although there have been some successes
in recent years, it is clear that much remains to be done - the
recent crisis in Argentina is a dramatic case in point. As part
of our prophetic witness we cannot allow debt cancellation to fall
off the tables of the powerful. We recognize that our 'campaign
of persistence' has only just begun.
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