What is Jubilee?

Throughout history, Jubilee years have been a call to restore justice. 

Jubilee has deep roots in faith traditions and scripture themes of canceling debts, caring for people and the land, and ending poverty and inequality. 

Pope Francis inaugurated the 2025 Jubilee Year of Hope on December 24, 2024. The Global Ecumenical Jubilee Committee and Caritas Internationalis quickly followed with the launch of the Turn Debt into Hope campaign for Jubilee 2025. This is a worldwide ecumenical movement advocating for systemic change to address global economic inequality and the burden of unjust debt. The global call is: 

  • Cancel unjust debt. 
  • Establish a mechanism for debt resolution within the United Nations.  
  • Prevent future cycles of unsustainable debt. 

Looking Back: Jubilee 2000 in Canada 

Jubilee 2000 marked a pivotal moment in global and national advocacy for debt cancellation, spearheaded in Canada by the Canadian Ecumenical Jubilee Initiative (CEJI) from 1998 to 2001. This campaign, supported by The Canadian Council of Churches and a coalition of faith-based organizations, became the most successful faith-driven advocacy effort in Canadian history. 

CEJI mobilized an unprecedented 640,000 Canadians to sign petitions calling for debt cancellation for low-income countries. This grassroots movement significantly influenced Canada’s approach to bilateral debt forgiveness and contributed to the broader global success of the Jubilee 2000 initiative, which canceled $100 billion in debt for 35 nations. 

The success of CEJI laid the groundwork for the creation of KAIROS: Canadian Ecumenical Justice Initiatives in 2001. KAIROS is grateful for the contributions of the CEJI team and partners, some of whom are now active participants in Jubilee 2025.  

We honour the late John Dillon and John Mihevc, whose leadership and expertise were instrumental to CEJI’s achievements. Dillon’s extensive research on global debt inspired hundreds of thousands of petition signatures and informed Canada’s debt cancellation policies, while Mihevc’s leadership and theological insights helped shape CEJI’s vision and outreach. They continued their work in social and ecological justice when they became part of the KAIROS team in 2001.  


The Global Debt Crisis Today 

The Global South is experiencing a deepening debt crisis, despite the debt cancelation achieved in 2000. The global financial system was not restructured to prevent recurring crises, leaving many nations vulnerable to economic and environmental shocks. 

This current crisis is fueled by a combination of rising interest rates, inflation, armed conflict, and the escalating impacts of climate change. A 2024 report from German NGOs Erlassjahr and Misereor highlights the scale of the issue: 130 countries in the Global South face “slightly critical” debt levels, while 24 countries are in a “very critical” situation. 

Key indicators of the crisis include

  • Skyrocketing public debt: More than 54 countries in the Global South allocate over 10 percent of their revenues to net interest payments, diverting resources from essential development and climate action. 
  • Debt servicing over essential services: In 48 countries representing 3.3 billion people, governments spend more on debt payments than on healthcare or education. 

The crisis disproportionately harms vulnerable populations, depriving them of the resources necessary for sustainable development. Many countries now spend five times more on debt repayments than on addressing climate impacts. In some cases, public debt levels have grown so large that repayment is no longer feasible, creating an unsustainable burden for future generations. 

This economic injustice is compounded by “ecological debt,” as countries in the Global North exploit resources from the Global South and Indigenous communities, often causing significant environmental and human rights harm. 

Addressing this crisis requires urgent action: public, private, and multilateral creditors must cancel or reduce debts, and political leaders must establish a multilateral framework for equitable debt resolution. Debt cancellation would enable a transformative shift, prioritizing social and environmental justice over profit, and fostering a more sustainable and equitable global future. 


A Jubilee Call to Address Human Rights Violations 

The Jubilee concept also calls on us to address colonial injustices by restoring land to the original owners and ending slavery.  

Indigenous rights, land back, and ecological debt are deeply interconnected issues in Canada, where Indigenous peoples have long been caretakers of the land, yet have faced dispossession, marginalization, and exploitation. The return of lands to Indigenous communities—often referred to as “land back”—is not just a question of legal restitution but of recognizing the knowledge, cultural practices, and sustainable guardianship that Indigenous peoples have practiced for millennia.  

Jubilee is also an opportunity to highlight Canada’s exploitative Temporary Foreign Workers Program (TFWP), which the UN’s special rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, said is a “breeding ground” for modern slavery. 

Canada’s TFWP has created a tiered labour system, where Canadian citizens and permanent residence enjoy rights and freedoms, while temporary foreign workers are trapped in an indentured labour market, tied to one employer and subject to abuse by employers and unscrupulous agents with little government support. Offering permanent residency to all migrant workers is a crucial step to addressing these inequalities, restoring their dignity and freedom, and ensuring they can fully participate in Canadian society without fear of reprisal or exclusion. 

Exploitive practices, including the Global North’s contributions to climate change, resource extraction and exploitive labour practices, extol a heavy toll on billions of people world-wide – particularly people from vulnerable groups, including women, girls, and individuals with diverse gender identities and sexual orientations. 

Countries in the Global South and Indigenous peoples bear the worst impacts of the climate crisis, despite contributing least to it, and suffer environmental harms from the Global North’s consumption and resource exploitation of their lands, forcing many people to migrate, creating an unacknowledged “ecological debt” owed by wealthy countries to low-income nations and Indigenous peoples. The concept of “ecological debt” was coined by civil society in the Global South in the early 1990s. Pope Francis already acknowledges the growing issue of “ecological debt” in Laudato Sí.  

Jubilee 2025 calls on us to prioritize human dignity and ecological health for all over profit that benefits only the few.  


A Jubilee of Faith and Action 

He has told you, O mortal, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God? Micah 6:8 NRSV 

When [Jesus] came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: 

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, 
    because he has anointed me 
        to bring good news to the poor. 
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives 
    and recovery of sight to the blind, 
        to set free those who are oppressed, 
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.” Luke 4:16-18 NRSVUE 

Grounded in biblical teachings such as Micah 6:8 and Luke 4:18, Jubilee 2025 reflects the Christian call to seek justice, defend the oppressed, and care for creation. As we face today’s interconnected crises of debt and climate injustice, let us act boldly to restore human welfare and ecological balance.