Home | UNICEF in Action | Highlights | Information Resources | Donations, Greeting Cards & Gifts | Press Centre | Voices of Youth | About UNICEF

UNICEF backs debt relief by the year 2000

"Past and current debt reduction efforts have been far too slow-moving," she said. "The year 2000 should signal a new start. We have enough information now to know that debt reduction is a critical key to poverty reduction -- and to the prospect of hope for millions and millions of children."

Ms. Bellamy noted only modest progress in realizing the 1996 Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative (HIPC) and suggested that the G8 consider revising HIPC's scope and timetable at its Summit in Birmingham, the United Kingdom, 15-17 May. G8 members are Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

HIPC, adopted in 1996 by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, was designed to bring an end to the debt crisis in the world's least developed nations. Now, despite some benefits to a tiny number of countries, the most debt-burdened nations cannot wait the three to six years for relief that the HIPC process requires. Ms. Bellamy cited an OXFAM study of Uganda, where help was received only after considerable delay.

While waiting for HIPC relief, Uganda spent $184 million, or $9 for every child, woman and man in debt servicing, according to OXFAM. This is almost ten times Uganda's per capita expense for public health and seven times the cost of primary education. Despite this burden, Uganda honoured its commitment to increase its outlay for primary schooling.

In other highly indebted countries, there is a similar pattern. Debt servicing accounted for substantially more than the amounts available to fund essential health and education programs for children. Bolivia and Guyana are scheduled to see HIPC relief this year. Mozambique and Côte d'Ivoire are to receive assistance in 1999.

Only a fraction of the world's poorest nations are to be added in 2000 and beyond under current schedules. "So despite all the fanfare, the HIPC Initiative seems just as slow and frustrating and inadequate as the litany of debt reduction schemes that preceded it," Ms. Bellamy said. "We didn't expect this. We hoped for much more."

In addition to advocating a more urgent timetable, UNICEF suggested dramatically increasing the resources devoted to debt reduction under HIPC from the presently anticipated figure of approximately $7.5 billion. Africa's total debt is $235 billion. "The $7.5 billion represents less than four per cent of the total," said Ms. Bellamy. "That kind of debt relief wouldn't bring the Nobel Prize for Mathematics!"

UNICEF works under the mandate of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Ms. Bellamy noted. "In this context it is only fair to express concern when the global economic powers commit $100 billion virtually overnight to bail out troubled Asian economies while HIPC makes less than $10 billion available to the poorest of the poor. Such a dichotomy, unless it is revised, threatens to perpetuate a pattern of too little too late, with disastrous effects for children."

"It's not that we should give less to Asia," Ms. Bellamy added. "What we desperately need is more for the least developed countries, mostly in Africa."

The UNICEF chief said compelling new arguments for lifting debt and putting the savings into bedrock social programmes are found in Development With A Human Face, edited by Santosh Mehrotra, Special Adviser in the Division of Evaluation, Policy and Planning of UNICEF and Richard Jolly, former Deputy Executive Director of UNICEF and presently Special Adviser to the Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

The book (Oxford, 1997) shows how ten developing nations, by pinpointing investment primarily in health and education for children and women, achieved remarkable progress, in some cases comparable to levels in industrialized countries.

Policy lessons of the book include the importance of state provision of these services; health systems based on rural preventive care; equity and high efficiency in social spending; sequencing spending so that investment in basic education precedes or is simultaneous with investment in health; and across-the-board interventions to improve the status of women.

"UNICEF hopes the world's financial leaders will catch the spirit of this landmark study and join the global movement for timely debt-reduction," Ms. Bellamy said. "When the world's most vulnerable children and women are given true priority, social progress takes place against seemingly impossible odds. But this can only happen if the poorest governments can afford bedrock social investments. Debt reduction has been a recognized prerequisite of development for a decade. We should not let the year 2000 pass without achieving it."

Home | UNICEF in Action | Highlights | Information Resources | Donations, Greeting Cards & Gifts | Press Centre | Voices of Youth | About UNICEF