UN General Assembly
1994

revenue for the repayment of debt. Without a standard, indebted countries will face the prospect of worsening 16 poverty for decades to come. We should recall that the precedent of debt forgiveness was set by two members of the Security Council, Britain and the United States. In 1946 the terms of a large United States loan to war-torn Britain stipulated that interest should be waived altogether should such interest exceed 2 per cent of British export revenues in any given year. That standard helped Britain to survive. We ask for no more. Worsening poverty has grave implications for development and democracy in our region — implications which, in the long term, may cost the multilateral financial institutions and their wealthier members more than the debt they could forgive, or cause to be forgiven, in the short term. Among these implications is the problem of refugees. We should recall that apart from large-scale violence, difficult economic circumstances are what creates refugees. Refugees are not only those people who clamber on board