why the debt should be cancelled : human rights

Background The main actors Why the debt should be cancelled Human Rights HIV / AIDS SAP's Illegitmate debt How the debt should be cancelled

Debt repayments in Nicaragua are greater than spending on health and primary education combined. Debt repayments are $117 million while spending on primary education is $25 million and spending on health is just $32 million

Debt repayments in Cameroon are greater than spending on health and primary education combined. Cameroon is currently spending $226 million on debt, $95 million on primary education and $64 million on health

Debt repayments in Zambia are currently greater than government spending on health and education combined. Zambia spends $158 million on debt, $33 million on education and just $24 million on health. Meanwhile 20% of population, some 2 million people, are living with HIV/AIDS

The debt burden of the poorest countries helps keep children out of school

• Sub-Saharan Africa now has 47 million children out of school. If present trends continue this figure will increase to 56 million by 2015.
  
  
• Out of 16 countries recently surveyed by Oxfam International, 12 cut public spending on education. All of these countries were undergoing Structural Adjustment
  
  
• User fees for education remain a component of many IMF and World Bank programs. Evidence has shown that user fees have a catastrophic effect on the ability of people to access education. In Tanzania the introduction of user fees for primary schools resulted in an immediate decline in school attendance.

Structural Adjustment and Debt repayments have led to cuts in government spending on health. There has been an alarming deterioration of health services in Africa over the past decade.

In 1999 an estimated 10.5 million children died of mostly preventable diseases.

User fees for health services, promoted by the WB/IMF have led to a decline in the use of maternity and other health services in the poorest communities, contributing to a rise in infant deaths and putting women’s health at risk.

Women are 30 times more likely to die in child birth in heavily indebted poor countries than in rich countries. In Zambia the infant mortality rate is 112 per 1,000 live births, In Ireland the rate is 6 per 1,000

Although accounting for only 10 per cent of the world’s population sub-Saharan Africa sees 90 per cent of all new HIV/AIDs infections along with 80 per cent of AIDS related deaths. Poverty has fuelled the spread of the virus in the region. Of the 41 poorest and most heavily indebted countries in the world, 34 are in sub-Saharan Africa. Debt is a major cause of poverty and hardship in indebted countries where approximately 50 per cent of the population live on less than $1 per day. 50% of hospital beds are occupied by people with an AIDS related disease. In 1998, Sub Saharan Africa paid over $15bn to rich creditors in debt repayments.
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The need to keep up debt payments speeds up the extraction of natural resources to an unsustainable pace.

This includes rapid deforestation which destroys biological diversity and turns vast tracks of land into virtual desert.

• IMF policies in heavily indebted Cameroon encourage export led growth with no environmental considerations. Between 1995 and 1997 the number of logging firms operating in Cameroon increased from 177 to 479 while lumber exports increased by 50 per cent.
  
  
• In Nicaragua an IMF loan in 1994 focused on increased exports from fishing, forestry and agriculture. This loan added to an already heavy pattern of deforestation. When Hurricane Mitch struck Nicaragua, its effects were exacerbated by widespread deforestation as much of the country had become susceptible to very high levels of erosion.
  
  

Structural Adjustment Programmes: Economic programs designed by the IMF and World Bank, which countries must follow if they want to receive debt relief or new loans. Although the IMF and World Bank now claim that they are basing their programmes on countries National Poverty Reduction Strategies, studies have shown that, in reality, little has changed.
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