The campaign for international debt relief

Kevin Lang and the Liberal Democrats support Jubilee Scotland's 'Cut the Strings' campaign on international debt relief.

Many countries in the world are crippled by debt they will never be able to repay. It is essential that initiatives to deal with this are not undermined by harmful conditions.

In the recent past, the IMF and World Bank have attached stringent fiscal and budgetary conditions to their lending, often involving privatisations and rapid economic liberalisation. They claim this is now a thing of the past. Yet very significant conditions are still imposed on countries when qualifying for debt relief.

For instance, budgetary and fiscal constraints imposed on Zambia meant that by 2005 there were 9000 unfilled teaching posts because of government cuts in the education budget.

At Gleneagles last year, the G8 promised to cancel all of the multilateral debt of those countries that have reached, or will eventually reach, the completion point of the Heavily-Indebted Poor Countries Initiative (HIPC) set up by the World Bank. However, the exclusion of major regional development banks in Latin America and Asia from the initiative will prevent some of the poorest areas on the planet from receiving debt relief. This means that countries will still be struggling to sustain debts owed to multilateral financial institutions which are not a part of the HIPC process.

The Liberal Democrats believe this is not acceptable. The crushing burden of these debts must not be partially addressed, but fully wiped out.

Find out more on Jubilee Scotland's independent campaign on debt relief.