Rich Countries Offer Empty Promises to the World's Poor Two-thousand was supposed to be the Jubilee year, named after the biblical concept in which debts are cancelled and slaves freed every 50 years. Last summer the leaders of the world's richest nations announced with great fanfare that there would finally be serious relief for the world's poorest, debt-ridden countries. That was then, this is now. The G-8 leaders last year were responding to public protests and organizing by advocates of debt cancellation, including the international coalition of Jubilee 2000 organizations, religious groups, the Pope, and other celebrities. Meanwhile, the rest are spending more on debt service than on health care or education.
Talk is cheap, and so are the leaders of the rich countries.
They want to make it through the Jubilee year with the least amount of debt relief they can get away with. But they are interested in the helping out with technologies that can provide new marketing opportunities for their own corporations. The failure to provide meaningful debt relief makes a mockery out of any Western proposals to help alleviate the AIDS epidemic in poor countries. Last week the Clinton administration offered a one billion dollar loan program to help African countries buy US anti-AIDS drugs. So that American pharmaceutical companies can sell their drugs at a profit to countries where 20 percent or more of adults are infected with the AIDS virus.