UK Politicians Pledge to Write Off Poor Nations’ Debts

On Sunday 26th September, the UK’s largest ever Trade Justice Campaign took place in Brighton. Mobilised by the Trade Justice Movement, a fast growing and powerful voice for Trade Justice in Britain, the campaign proved to be fruitful with an immediate respond from politicians.

On Sunday evening, Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, delivered a special address on Global Poverty at St Bartholomew’s Church in Brighton, ahead of his speech at the Labour Party Annual Conference. Throughout his speech, Brown showed his positive response to the 5000 campaigners voting for trade justice.

To about 400 debt-relief and fair-trade activists, Brown made an very encouraging announcement, “Although there is no international agreement on 100% multi-lateral debt relief, Britain will do more.”

“We will pay our share of the multi-lateral debt repayments of reforming low-income countries. We will make payments in their stead to the World Bank and African Development Bank for the portion that relates to Britain’s share of this debt,” he said as he pledged to carry the burden of the poor countries.

As the Chairman of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Brown has long been promoting policies to solve the international debt crisis. It was reported that France and Canada are already understood to be planning similar announcements.

The UK holds about 10% of the total debt owed to the World Bank and other development banks, which is around £100m. The unconditional writing off of debt will greatly contribute to the eradication of world poverty.

This will also allow developing countries to devote a higher proportion of their budgets to health, education and economic development, therefore it lifts up the living standard of many people so that they can become more self-reliant.

According to Gordon Brown, the next step is to put pressure on other major creditors such as the US, Japan and Germany to follow the same policy. And this will be done during meetings of the IMF and World Bank later this week.