A few, such as Gordon Brown, Britain's chancellor of the exchequer, have tried to go further by campaigning for greater flexibility in the HIPC initiative. This campaign deserves our support. These are not proposals that absolve Third World countries of their own responsibility for the accumulation of large and unsustainable debt loads. What they embody, on the contrary, is a recognition that debt loads emerge out of a specific global context that is in part moulded by creditor countries themselves and, hence, that responsibility for the emergence of huge debt loads must be shared by all. Gregory Baum, a noted Roman Catholic theologian and social activist in Canada writes of a distinction between compassion and justice.
Debt relief falls into the category more of an act of compassion.
It relieves some of the financial pressure on poor Third World governments, giving them space to pursue domestic economic reform in ways that will not destroy the social fabric of their countries, many of which are already very fragile after years of civil strife. However, that space will quickly disappear if relief is not followed by some reforms to the international economic system. At the top of the list is a significant increase in the resources of the IMF which will allow it to play a more effective and universal role of easing the burden of economic adjustment for all countries. Real justice, however, will depend upon reforms to the international trading system. For the HIPCs, this means greater access to markets in the developed world, especially in the still heavily protected agricultural sector.