The public policy notion of debt relief resonated quickly within the religious community, because it is reflective of the biblical concept known as the time of Jubilee which is a forgiveness of debt after fifty years. The Jubilee 2000 Campaign, as it came to be called, was and is a worldwide movement to achieve a debt-free start for the poorest countries as we head into the new millennium. For these poor nations, the future is almost hopeless because of this crushing debt. Hopelessness is what the biblical jubilee was designed to avoid and why it is time to lift the burden of fifty years of bad economic decisions that have created the present debt crises. In God's envisioned world, no person, no family, and by extension no nation is to be permanently impoverished.
Oppressive debt is like peonage.
Peonage is never an acceptable result of debt. Economic relationships are never to be allowed to make life hopeless. With debt relief, we have faced up to the reality that most of the debt of the poorest countries will not and cannot be repaid. The poorest countries around the globe, are being paralyzed in their self development by an unbearable debt load accumulated over decades. This repayment has required unconscionable human sacrifice that falls heavily on the most vulnerable people in these debtor nations.