|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Rice Thresher
Phone:
|
by Elizabeth Decker thresher staff
Sanghor is the co-founder of the Jubilee 2000 organizations, which aim to cancel the debts of Third World nations. The organizations claim that the debts were incurred illegitimately by non-democratic governments, and debt service payments are strangling these countries and creating extreme poverty within them. Sanghor is the nephew of the former president of Senegal, where he grew up. He went to Keele University in England, where he first began organizing and researching the topic of Third World debt. He moved to New York to continue working on the campaign and has spoken across the United States to raise awareness of the issue. Director of the Texas Fair Trade Campaign Jere Locke introduced Sanghor. Locke, who works with the Citizen's Trade Campaign, explained that the topic of Third World debt is a part of a larger international state of affairs. "What we're going to be looking at today is kind of a whole global system," Locke said. "The debt is just kind of one part of that system. It's a system where the winners are generally corporations, ... and the losers are the vast majority of people in this world." Locke introduced Sanghor as one of the co-founders of Jubilee 2000. He discussed the organization's success at gathering 24 million signatures in support of eliminating debt in Third World nations. Signers of the petition include Paul Hewson (better known as U2's Bono), Pope John Paul II, Nelson Mandela, Jesse Jackson Jr. and the leaders of most major religions, Locke said. Sanghor began his speech by focusing on the origins of the debt in most Third World countries. Sanghor explained that most countries that make up the Third World are located south of the equator, referring to them as the "Global South." Also, these nations are all former colonies of European nations. Sanghor explained that the money loaned to the nations of the Global South in the 1970s came from a flow of money into European banks at the time. Vast sums were made by Middle Eastern nations during the oil crisis and this money, called "petro dollars," was deposited into European bank accounts. Additionally, President Richard Nixon's decision to unpeg the American dollar from the gold standard in 1971 allowed the United States to print money more freely. These new notes were deposited in banks, and in order to profit, the banks loaned that money to leaders of Third World nations in an irresponsible manner, Sanghor said. Third World countries needed the money to create new nations after gaining independence from colonial powers, and so the European bankers were well-received, Sanghor said. "If you're newly independent, and taking into account what colonialism means, you have to build an economy, you have to start from zero, build your economy, build your new country, build your nation. That's what you had to do, and you need money to do so," Sanghor said. However, the terms for these loans included very high interest rates, and as a result, Third World nations soon owed their creditors far more than they had borrowed. "The interest rates on the money lent to these governments was compounding over and over, growing like a snowball," Sanghor said. When the Third World nations couldn't keep up with service payments on their debts, the American and European banks refused to loan them any more money if they failed to meet the terms of their earlier loans. In response, structural adjustment programs were born in the United Nations that made new loans available to the Global South, but only if they agreed to many restrictions, including liberalizing the economy, devaluing the currency and cutting down on social services like health care and education. There are up to 144 such conditions that must be met under the terms of structural readjustment. "Those conditions created an unprecedented poverty in those countries," Sanghor said. "That poverty is driven by debt-driven poverty, and that poverty in turn creates pandemic disease, malnutrition, etc., and this is what the crisis is about." An additional problem, Sanghor said, was that the money borrowed by the leaders of the Global South did not go to help the people, which further increased the poverty in these nations. "Mostly the money was invested in ... projects which failed like dams, which created disease, which killed people and damaged the environment throughout the Third World," Sanghor said. Sanghor said that regimes were free to borrow money irresponsibly while in office because they knew they would leave office before having to make a single debt payment. As a result, it is the people themselves or the more recently elected democratic regimes that bear the burden of repaying the debt, Sanghor said. For example, Nelson Mandela inherited the debt from the apartheid government in South Africa. Sanghor said it was not legal for debts of one regime to be transferred to other regimes, especially when the regime that borrowed the money came to power illegitimately. "It is under international law illegitimate, illegal to transfer the debt of the regime, which is not the debt of the state, it's the debt of the regime because the money is not used to serve the purposes of the state, the money is used to serve the particular regime of that country," Sanghor said. "That's a form of debt bondage which is condemned by the United Nations." The debt, Sanghor said, creates poverty in the Global South which ruins the quality of life and threatens the lives of the people in those nations. Sanghor explained that corporations threaten citizens of the developed world in the same way that they threaten the people of the Third World. "People here should support this movement, because corporations are coming after you, whether you are aware of it or not," Sanghor said. "Globalization doesn't spare any human beings. Corporations put profit before human values and human needs." Sanghor said the United States is starting to see some of the same problems that plague the Third World, including a scarcity of health care resources, fewer government services and rising costs of higher education, albeit to a lesser extent. Sanghor said although the organization is named Jubilee 2000, the founders and participants of the movement will not stop their efforts now that the year 2000 has passed. "The year 2000 never meant that things would stop in the year 2000," Sanghor said. "We used the Jubilee principle, which is deep faith-based wisdom, plus this prospect of the year 2000, which is bringing forth the new millennium, that's why we chose Jubilee 2000. ... It was symbolic." Sanghor concluded by explaining that the year 2000 was an opportunity to improve the world. "Every 2000 years, something good, something new happens, and we wanted that thing to be total, immediate and unconditional cancellation of the debt of the countries of the Global South - a new beginning for humanity, like people from all walks of life to join hands and say, 'Here is the human family, let's get together, let's forgive each other,'" Sanghor said. Lovett College junior Oluwatomilade Fatunde, one of the organizers of the speech, explained that part of Sanghor's appeal as a speaker is that he is very prominent on this issue, and that this issue should be discussed more at Rice. Fatunde said continued exposure to the issue of Third World debt will be necessary here at Rice to bring this issue to the forefront. "I think consciousness is a big part of it," Fatunde said. "I think we're going to have to keep talking about this until this becomes something that people recognize as important, as much of a problem as the environment, that it's something that you actually think about." Fatunde hoped following this initial exposure to the problems facing the Third World in connection with the debt students will work to pressure people in positions of power to cancel this debt and work in other ways to raise public consciousness of the issue. About 60 people attended the speech in Sewall Hall, Room 301.
- back - |
|||
|
Search the Thresher pages:
This document may be distributed electronically, provided that it is distributed in its entirety and includes this notice. However, it cannot be reprinted without the express written permission of: The Rice Thresher, Rice University MS-524, PO Box 1892, Houston, TX 77251-1892, USA. The Thresher Online Project -- ethresh@listserv.rice.edu |
