The end of 2000 was marked with mutual backslapping by rich country governments and international financial institutions. But for debt campaigners the new year was a missed opportunity for cancelling the poorest countries' unpayable debts.
Creditors agree that the rationale for debt reduction is poverty reduction.
But they accept no obligation to write off the debt necessary to finance poverty reduction or to meet development targets of halving global poverty by the year 2015. For creditors, debt relief is more about how much debtor countries can afford to pay, taking export earnings as the principal measure of debt sustainability. So there is an asymmetry between ends and means at the heart of the creditors' debt relief project. They are committed to debtor countries meeting the 2015 development targets, but will not use these benchmarks to decide how much debt cancellation governments need. For Cafod, social justice and good economics are inseparable.