How
hunger can be solved: World debt cancellation
52 of the world's poorest countries (of which 37 are in Africa)
owe a total of $376 billion in debt. The repayments for this huge
amount of money take up a very large portion of each country's
income to, leaving them with little left to help themselves and
solve their hunger problems.
Campaigners protesting to 'Drop
the debt'. |
The areas where chronic persistent hunger occurs
need capital and resources to develop and implement schemes to help
solve their problems. Cancelling world debt would provide these
countries with the ability to help themselves, such as being able
to develop their economy in order to safeguard against future
hunger problems, develop and import technologies to begin and
increase the amount of output from their arable land or help fund
imports of food from abroad, helping to solve the redistribution
problem.
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The G7 (Group of seven), the seven countries with the largest
economies in the world, pledged to cancel $100 billion of this debt
in June 1999. An impressive figure, but actually, lending
governments already know they are not going to receive most of this
$100 billion back and have made provisions to cover their losses.
So although this is a good start, in many countries it will have no
significant impact on their payments - it is cost-free, and also
benefit-free. If the debt being cancelled is debt that could never
have been paid anyway, this will have little impact on the
repayments for poor countries.
Many countries are pledging to cancel 100% of the debt owed to
them if certain conditions are meet. For example, an extract from a
speech Bill Clinton made on October 12th 1999, archived on the US
State Department's website says:
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"Last month, I went even
further, announcing that the United States will forgive 100 percent
of the debt owed us by the world's least developed countries if
they will use the savings to address basic human needs. And I
committed the United States to a new effort to accelerate the
development of vaccines for diseases that devastate the developing
world." - Bill Clinton
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You can help these poorer countries by
supporting and helping those groups and individuals who are trying
to convince their governments to cancel world debt. Your support
could give a debt free start to 1 billion people, and help to solve
the world's hunger problem. Alternatively you can support online by
clicking a button at http://www.thehungersite.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/HungerSite,
where advertisers will donate 1 1/2 cups of staple food to a hungry
person.
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Help the hungry: click the
image to donate some free food.
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