Maryknoll missioners have seen the impact of overwhelming and unjust debt on already poor communities in the countries where they live and work.. Repeated debt crises in the 1980s and 1990s gave creditors, including the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, a handle to reshape the economies of over 100 countries. Structural adjustment programs and additional macroeconomic policy reforms attached as conditions on debt relief and new loans moved way beyond the legitimate objective of controlling inflation, setting up the Southern hemisphere to provide the cheap labor, important minerals, oil and water, plus new markets essential to the free-market-driven development now being written into bilateral and regional trade agreements.
With the Jubilee USA Network and many others around the world, Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns has called for
- 100 percent cancellation of impoverished country debt without conditions that worsen poverty and environmental destruction;
- annulment of illegitimate debt;
- for the creation of a neutral, international mechanism for arbitrating disputes over debt; and
- for a new global economy that recognizes and rectifies centuries of injustice.
See also:
- House subcommittee approves measure to cancel Haiti’s debt, March 2010
- On the trail of the vultures picking over Liberia's debt, good video on vulture funds on BBC website. (If you cannot access video, try upgrading your video player.)
- Jubilee USA: Haiti’s victory: $1.2 billion in debt cancelation
- Jubilee USA: Stop Vulture Funds, Act HR 2932
- Jubilee USA: Voices from the Global South
- Jubilee USA: Country reports
- U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops: Background on debt
- The price of oil: Connections between debt and oil
- OGC Update: Debt (1999)
- Beyond Iraq: Proclaiming a True Revolution of Values, a statement from the Religious Working Group on the World Bank/IMF