At Jubilee Scotland we have been part of many campaigns calling for debt relief and the cancellation of unjust debt in the global south. Adding to the unjust sovereign debt that many nations need relief for financially, there is another type of debt that needs to be addressed by it’s systemic nature, debt incurred by climate change.  Climate change does not affect people equally. Those individuals, communities and countries affected the most by climate change are also those who have contributed the least to it. Everyday in the global south, there are droughts, natural disasters, food shortages and loss of habitat, as a result of the climate crisis. Many of the affected countries go into debt, because they lack additional finances to respond to these climate disasters.

At the same time, climate change is primarily caused by rich, high-emission countries, including the UK and Scotland. We therefore owe a moral debt to those countries and communities that suffer the most from climate change.  

The 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) which takes place in Glasgow in November 2021 is set to be the most important UN climate conference for years. COP26 will focus on the immediate need for dramatic climate mitigation targets to be set by Scotland and other world leaders. Additionally, global south countries will be looking for finance initiatives, as more funding is necessary to adapt to the devastating impact of the climate crisis.

In partnership with Oxfam Scotland, Stop Climate Chaos Scotland and SCIAF, we have been researching the ways that the Scottish government can make a meaningful impact at COP26. The Scottish Government has previously committed to putting the voices of people affected by climate change at the heart of the conference. By increasing the Climate Justice Fund and developing a position on loss and damage and championing this issue at COP26, Scotland can show it is serious about its commitment to climate justice and set an example for other global north countries. 

Anne Funnemark, campaign director at Jubilee Scotland and lead author of the report has said: “The climate emergency is, quite literally, costing the earth for developing countries. Ahead of COP26 in Glasgow, rich countries must demonstrate that they will stand shoulder to shoulder with the world’s poorest people by offering more financial support to countries on the frontline of the climate emergency to adapt to climate change while also compensating them for their losses.”

We’re calling on the Scottish Government to :

• Significantly increase the Climate Justice Fund with new and additional finance, such as from a high-emitter tax

• Proactively call for other rich countries, including the UK, to increase their own climate finance informed by a Fair Shares analysis, while championing additionality before and at COP26

• Undertake a review of the Climate Justice Fund to build on its success, ensuring that it is fully aligned with best practice in climate adaptation globally

• Develop a position on loss and damage and use this to champion progress on it at COP26. Namely, a financial mechanism for the WIM and meaningful development of the Santiago Network

Read the report here, or through our viewer below.

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As household debt in the UK has become the highest it’s ever been on record,  many lower income households finds themselves unable to save money at all, increasing these households’ vulnerability in times of financial insecurity.  Households unable to make ends meet have been said by the Office of National Statistics  “to be living beyond their means”. 

Blaming of borrowers often occurs whenever the topic of household debt comes up. The notion that debtedness is the fault of the individual, is often fuelled by soundbites and stories in the media. Society promotes the idea that it is a self-inflicted punishment for something one person has done, because they’re the ones signing up to credit cards, taking out loans, repaying the mortgage. But most household debt isn’t because people are frivolous like many presume. Rather, it is caused by reductions of wages and benefits, redundancy, and illness. According to Stepchange’s Scotland in the Red Report, before COVID-19 the main cause of household debt was  ‘life events’, Life events are classified as unexpected shocks that put a burden on a person’s finances. In many cases, such events are costly burdens that complicate a person’s life, with no room for flexibility. 

With a third of people being affected financially by COVID-19, a wide range of people have experienced a ‘life event’ that has affected them financially.  An estimated 4 million people have been added to the number with substantial household debt since the crisis began. This begs the question of whether or not this will pave the way for people to talk about their debts and how it affects them.

At the same time, The Bank of England stated that £7.4bn of consumer credit was repaid during the first month of lockdown, the biggest net repayment in a month since 1993. A huge reduction in retail spending led to this, with the outstanding debts on credit cards remaining at £64bn. This positive sounding news demonstrates how the lockdown has added to the wealth divide in the UK. People who were able to keep working can see their debts cleared from a lack of incentive to spend, while many workers being hit by job losses and cut wages take on more debt while on furlough. If this trend continues we are unlikely to see a decrease in stigma associated with debt. It’s possible that these figures could be used by creditors to present a distorted version of events when payment holidays end, adding to the guilt of people who are unable to repay when so many others could.

A poll conducted by Citizens Advice Scotland this summer found that 1 in 4 Scottish people were concerned about their debt repayments. In response to these findings a spokesperson for the Scottish Government said that “We recognise the stress and strain debt can create and we would encourage anyone with concerns to contact organisations such as CAS to get advice and support.” While this statement acknowledges the fact that it’s a stressful time for people in debt, it passes the buck of having a conversation about debt back onto the charities that have already done so much to bring the issue to the foreground. Along with voting down the recent plans for rent controls, the Scottish Government hasn’t done much to address people’s heightened debt concerns. 

A reduction of the stigma around household debt is necessary to widen the conversation on the topic and increase the pressure on government and public lenders to make systematic changes to our flawed financial system. To make this happen  we have to harness the shared experience of COVID-19’s impact on household debt. People should not be treated like criminals for the chaotic circumstances that life throws at them. The conversation needs to be facilitated in a way where the Scottish government talks about personal debt, in a transparent way that makes people feel heard instead of at risk for speaking out.  If we don’t talk about the devastating impact of household debt openly and address the scale of the problem, we won’t build back as a better society. 

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The outbreak of COVID-19 has reminded us what is really important – looking after each other and our communities, our health and well-being, our public services. Now, as Scotland moves past a peak of infections, our attention turns to what comes next The choices made by the government now will affect our communities and our climate for generations to come. 

The recovery plan must lay the foundations of a greener, fairer Scotland for everyone. Where we reduce inequalities, strengthen public services and provide an adequate income for everyone. Where we do our fair share of climate action and restore nature. Where we all have a say in decisions that affect us.

We are proud to stand with over 80 organisations in Scotland calling for a Just and Green Recovery in Scotland. Together, we wrote to the First Minister outlining five steps for the recovery which you can read here.

This is just the beginning, we need to grow and show public support for a recovery that helps us transform our society for the better

Will you join Scotland’s movement to Build Back Better?

Sign the petition here!

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We need to assess the public health crisis that is about to explode in the Global South if debt is not outright cancelled. While most Northern countries are in the midst of fighting against the virus, the heaviest impact caused by the pandemic will be on countries in Africa, South & Latin America and Southeast Asia. With many of the Healthcare and social security systems of these countries being ill-equipped to handle the outbreak, the virus will have a devastating effect on the poorest communities. Jubilee Scotland has signed onto a new Debt Jubilee along with 200 other organisations, alling for the cancellation of debt payments paid out from global south countries to the World Bank and IMF during this time. This petition  is one of many calling on the government to take a stance on a pressing issue. It’s estimated by the Jubilee Debt Campaign that over $300 Billion in full debt cancellation is necessary for these countries to fight the virus over the next year. Some payments have been delayed so far, but by merely suspending debt payments, they only defer the problems of these countries for a little while. 

This approach ends up costing creditors nothing, but borrowing countries will have bigger repayments and higher debt risks down the line for many of these countries. Covid-19 has already led to falls in commodity prices and projected increases in borrowing costs in the global south, with limited resources at hand to handle a public health crisis. If these countries have to rely on more outside loans to fight the pandemic they will be stuck in high interest debt traps for decades to come.  One of the biggest risks that these countries are exposed to is the legal challenges that can be brought upon them for failing to keep up their payments. The G20 have called upon private creditors to delay payments, but they are not obliged to. Currently 77 countries are estimated to pay $9.4 Billion from May to December, as part of the G20 deal. Private lenders can sue governments in the UK courts for following the G20’s advice and suspending payments. But the Global South should not be pushed into this by the western institutions who have pledged to help them.

We need your help to call on Chancellor Rishi Sunak, to promote debt relief in these countries that are worst affected by the virus. By signing up to our petition, you help us put across the message that we need real debt cancellation and ways to work out debt in future that doesn’t put human lives at risk. 

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Some of the world’s poorest countries are facing health and economic crisis unlike what we have seen here. By cancelling the upcoming debt payments owed by these countries, it would be the best way to free up existing public revenue to support their people and not be burdened with debt that rises unsustainably over the next few years of recovery.

The IMF and the World Bank have called for debt payments by the poorest countries to other governments to be suspended, but with the effects of the pandemic likely to last for years, delaying rather than cancelling payments won’t solve the problem. 

Cancellation also needs to apply to all creditors, including bilateral, multilateral and private lenders, to ensure freed-up money goes to support the pandemic response, and not to pay off other debts.

Anne Funnemark Campaign director of Jubilee Scotland, said: “Millions of people in some of the world’s poorest countries are facing devastating health, social and economic crises as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. Permanently cancelling upcoming debt payments owed by these countries would be the fastest way to free up existing public resources to tackle this unprecedented crisis and to save lives.

“The suspension on debt payments called for by the IMF and World Bank will fall short of this goal if it doesn’t apply to all lenders, and only postpones payments. Full cancellation of all external debt payments is critical, along with emergency finance that doesn’t add to debt burdens. This must be followed up with a more comprehensive and long-term approach to debt crisis resolution.”

As well as a cancellation of debt service, up to an additional US$ 73.1 billion of emergency finance will be needed to help low income economies as they respond to the crisis in 2020. This must be provided through grants, rather than loans, to stop recipient countries getting even deeper into debt. Addressing the long-term debt pressures on developing countries also requires decision-makers finally agreeing reforms to the international system for dealing with sovereign debt restructuring, once the acute Covid-19 crisis has passed. 

A joint letter– signed by Jubilee Scotland – will be sent to governments and their representatives at the IMF and World Bank today. It calls for:

• The permanent cancellation of all external debt payments due in 2020 by developing countries, with no accrual of interest and charges and no penalties. 
• The provision of additional, fresh emergency finance that does not create more debt.
• Debt cancellation and new financing to be provided free of demands for market-friendly and austerity-focused policy reforms in developing countries.
• Measures to be put in place to protect developing countries from lawsuits when ceasing 2020 debt payments.
• A process under UN auspices to be agreed in the longer term, to support systematic, timely, and fair restructuring of sovereign debt.

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—–

Written by Helen Mercer: Jubilee Scotland launch 29^th January 2020

There is a strong tendency among campaigners on PFI to see the problems with which we are all familiar – the high cost of finance, poor construction, excessive profits – as stemming from factors such as woolly thinking, incompetence, corruption, fraud, lack of transparency and weak monitoring. I argue first that while such factors may exist they are not the root causes: the problems with PPPs are systemic and structural in an environment deliberately created by governments.

A simple and curtailed history of PFI

1. By the 1990s Britain faced a pent up demand for renewed infrastructure. The IMF loan of 1976 agreed by the Labour government lead to major cuts in public expenditure, continued into the 1980s. By the 1990s major maintenance problems in public infrastructure were apparent, and often the preferred solution was to demolish the entire building and start afresh.

Pent up demand for investment in public infrastructure

2. However by the 1990s public authorities’ traditional access to public borrowing was limited by the Maastricht Treaty and its successors, together with severe unilateral targets adopted by Gordon Brown on levels of government debt and budget deficits. Central government has various tools to secure cheap borrowing rates, but these were no longer available to public authorities to address their infrastructure backlogs.

PFI BECAME THE ‘ONLY GAME IN TOWN’

3. Governments therefore gave the private sector a free hand in providing much needed public investment. Capital markets had been deregulated. Investors were seeking profitable outlets and Government was a willing tool in opening up the state sector as a source of profit. It passed legislation guaranteeing payments on PFI deals and offered special PFI subsidies to public bodies to ensure they could afford to pay the private premiums.

PROFITABLE INVESTMENT WAS UNDERWRITTEN BY GOVERNMENT

4. Public authorities were left to deal with predatory private investors and lenders. In forcing them down the PFI route the government deliberately set up a situation of asymmetric information. All the knowledge and experience was on the side of the private investors and lenders, on the public side was a urgent need for what only they could offer.

PUBLIC AUTHORITIES WERE SENT NAKED AMONG WOLVES

PFI schemes also became a key driver of the outsourcing of public services, as privately provided servicing and maintenance of the PFI building became part of the PFI contract. (This has not been the case for the variants PF2 and NPD/Hub projects but has re-appeared in the Mutual Investment Model (MIM’s) The PFI mix was a toxic one of heavy debt, outsourced servicing, together with a lack of control over the contractors themselves.

This mix of factors shows that the failings of PFI cannot be characterised as unintended or unfortunate. The solutions therefore cannot lie just in FOI requests, or judicial review or tax adjustments. These activities provide publicity and additional knowledge and are therefore useful in campaigning, but such actions cannot be paraded as solutions.

Hence the economic history of PFI shows a systemic, in-built purposeful failure in which even personal or corporate corruption, assuming it can be proven, is of minor importance in understanding the root of the problems. This picture of the system, the environment within which PFIs have developed needs to be complemented by considering the way PFI contracts are structured.

The structure of PFI contracts

To describe the structures set up through PFI and similar projects is again to broach a large and complex area so I want to focus on just one key point element – the role of the company which signs the contract with the public authority – the Special Purpose Vehicle or SPV.

It is the SPV which, in return for an annual payment, secures all sources of finance, pays building contractors and, where relevant, the service providers. They are private companies, whose shares are owned by private investors increasingly infrastructure investment funds, such as HICL, Dalmore Capital, Standard Aberdeen, 3i, Innisfree, Semperian.

The diagram shows an SPV sitting like a spider at the centre of a web of contracts – the primary contract with the public authority and then the various contracts with lenders and with the contractors.

The role of the SPV is effectively to pump public money to various private actors and most importantly to the shareholders themselves. The shareholders extend 10% of the finance needed for the project and their loan carries interest rates usually of around 10-15% and is one of the reasons why PFI is so expensive. In addition as shareholders they are entitled to dividends and these accrue from any difference between what the public body pays the SPV (in debt, payment for services etc) and the monies owed by the SPV to lenders, builders and service providers. In the case of the Scottish Non-Profit PFIs any such surplus does not accrue to investors.

The position of the SPV is the main reason why buyouts as the solution are to PFI are bound to be unsatisfactory. A buyout involves the public authority effectively ending a commercial contract under commercial terms, and as a result penalty clauses must kick in and investors and others will be compensated for the loss of anticipated earnings. They walk off with a lump sum from the public purse.

Solution: nationalise the SPVs as a way to end PFIs

It was recognition of the structural features of PFIs that prompted campaigners to look at the idea of nationalising the SPVs. It is not a buyout because no PFI contract is cancelled or ended: instead ownership of the SPV passes to the government and hence the parties to the main PFI contract are both publicly owned a situation which immediately opens new spaces for restructuring the relationship.

This has two effects which reverse the systemic problems referred to in the first part of this talk. First, control over the terms of borrowing returns to central government which can renegotiate debt with all the lenders. Secondly, the public authorities regain control over all the other contracts, including receiving the profits which had previously accrued to the owners of the SPV. Research with Dexter Whitfield has indicated that, using data up to March 2018, the elimination of SPV profits would reduce the costs to public authorities of their annual payments to the SPV by £1.4bn per year.ⁱ

Afterword

Many plans are being developed for publicly financed and provided infrastructure. However the question remains of how to deal with the toxic legacy we have inherited – from PFIs, PF2s, NPD/Hubs and now MIMs? The question cannot be continually ducked: nationalising SPVs is one option that merits serious consideration.

Read more about this in Nationalising Special Purpose Vehicles to end PFI: a discussion of the
costs and benefits.

The solution is in fact much more detailed than the outline provided in this talk and the full paper considers levels of compensation and the need to honour outstanding debts. It also considers the further changes that need to be made to move towards publicly financed infrastructure and insourced services.

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1. The Scottish Government launched its White Paper ‘Scotland’s Future’ on the 26th November. In this, debt relief is highlighted as a priority for international development, with the statement: “The Scottish Government will give careful consideration to the question of ‘unjust’ debts; will work to ensure that Scottish export politics do not create new unjust debts; and support moves to establish Scotland as an international centre for debt arbitration.” While remaining neutral on the issue of Scottish independence, Jubilee Scotland is welcoming the Government’s recognition of sovereign debt as a key issue for Scotland’s international development policy. This is a great campaign success. It is recognised however that in either scenario following the referendum Jubilee Scotland’s work must continue to ensure unjust debts are given full consideration through an audit of Scottish and UK debts and a commitment made to cancel all those deemed to be unjust. Jubilee Scotland’s paper outlining their asks for debt justice in both a yes and no vote, and responses by the Yes Scotland and Better Together campaigns can be found here. The Scottish Government’s commitment appears in chapter 6 of the white paper.
2. Egypt has been revealed to be the most indebted country in the Middle East and Africa, seventh in the World. (Argentina remains in first place globally as the country least likely to be able to pay its debts.) Egypt’s debts now make up 79.8 percent of its GDP, totalling $234.4 billion which is the equivalent of $2600 for every Egyptian citizen. The likelihood of Egypt being unable to pay its debts has now risen to 37.9 percent. Egypt is a key case for Scotland and the UK with many debts owed by the country being to UK Export Finance for loans made during the Mubarak regime and for arms. Meanwhile, Kuwait plans to buy $2 billion of Egyptian bonds as part of a second aid package having already pledged $15 billion in aid alongside Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates earlier this year. Read more on Egypt’s debts here.
3. Grenada is making plans to lower its income tax threshold on the recommendations of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and as part of its debt restructuring programme. Grenada is currently seeking to hold a conference with all of its creditors to come to a mutual agreement about how to meet its debt obligations.
4. The IMF Fiscal Monitor Report estimates that Pakistan requires $76.9 billion, the equivalent of 30 percent of its yearly GDP to pay off its existing debts. This places it at the top of the of the list of indebted emerging countries and suggests it is going to find itself borrowing more in order to meet its repayments.
5. Several developing countries, including Jamaica, El Salvador and Pakistan, are failing to meet international development goals after rich countries reneged on a pledge to deal with their debts. Moreover, unjust debts in countries such as Greece, Portugal and Latvia are now increasing poverty at an alarming rate. These findings are part of Jubilee Debt Campaign’s ‘Life and debt: Global studies of debt and resistance’, published in October 2013. The report compares debt crises in nine countries: Egypt, El Salvador, Greece, Jamaica, Latvia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Portugal and Tunisia. Key findings include:
   • Jamaica pays more on its foreign debt repayments than Greece at a staggering 33 percent of its revenue.
   • Greece is spending 29 percent on its revenue on debt repayments.
   • El Salvador continues to spend 25% of government revenue on foreign debt payments, the debt originating from lending by the western world to the vicious military junta in the 1980s, whilst hunger and extreme poverty are increasing.
   • Pakistan is unlikely to be able to meet many of the Millennium Development Goals because of its debts, including those aiming to halve the proportion of people going hungry, eliminating gender disparity at all levels of education, and reducing by two-thirds the child mortality rate.

   The report also gives inspiring examples of the campaigns in countries for debt justice, for example calls in Tunisia for a debt audit.

6. At the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Colombo, Sri Lanka, 15-17th November 2013, on the issue of debt it was minuted that: ‘Heads welcomed the report of the Commonwealth High Level Mission on the debt and financing challenges of Small States. Heads emphasised the need to continue advancing global awareness of unsustainable Small States’ debt and the accompanying financial challenges they confront, building on the Mission’s recent work. They endorsed the recommendations of the Mission’s Report, underlining the importance of continued collaboration within the international community to address these debt and financing challenges and to build small states’ resilience as well as continued engagement on innovative solutions such as the Mission’s proposals for debt reduction and the inclusion of a vulnerability criterion in debt alleviation interventions and allocation procedures of international financial institutions. Heads reaffirmed their support for the Commonwealth Secretariat’s current debt management and recording work.’ It is reassuring to see sovereign debt maintaining a place on the agenda of the Commonwealth Heads of Government. The report to which they refer includes recommendations on the need for integration of resilience building of small states, provision of grace periods for debt repayment during times of natural disasters or other external shocks and provision of countercyclical loans. Whilst these are valuable contributions to the pursuit of debt justice, Jubilee Scotland believes these efforts must go further if they are to tackle the unjust economic systems which support existing lending and borrowing principles. Equally, more attention must be paid to the concept of ‘unjust debt’ and its necessary cancellation.
7. The IMF wants Sri Lanka to boost its tax revenues to cut both its budget deficit and public debts, a further demonstration of the IMF seeking to impose its economic policies on developing countries. Read the full story here.
8. Qatar has agreed to provide $150 million in debt relief to Palestine. This was announced by US Secretary of State John Kerry during Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in October although no further details were provided.
9. A new Eurodad report, ‘The new debt vulnerabilities. 10 reasons why the debt crisis is not over’ was published in November 2013. It finds that debt vulnerabilities have changed, but overall have not been substantially reduced. The number of bank failures has dropped since the height of the financial crisis which is good news. However, the downside is that governments have paid a high price to stabilise the financial sector, and sovereign debt levels have surged. It states that: Debt has not been canceled or paid off, it has simply been shifted from one balance sheet to another, and primarily from the private purse to public or government coffers. The opportunity to use the financial crisis for fundamental reforms in nation and international debt management and debt crises prevention and resolution has largely been wasted. To read a summary of the report and its recommendations as well as download a copy you can visit the Eurodad website.
10. A Bank of England report has criticised existing methods of dealing with sovereign debt crisis. Referring to bailouts in Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Cyprus, the authors say using public money to bail out nations leaves taxpayers shouldering an “inequitable” burden. They suggest that private creditors, those who lent indebted nations the cash in the first place, should instead foot the bill for any rescue. Whilst acknowledging that current trends in ad hoc bailouts in response to debt crises are poor, the report pays no attention to considering alternative longer-term solutions to debt workout upon which Jubilee Scotland campaigns. It maintains a commitment to bailouts and simply shifts emphasis from public to private rescue plans. Note: in a disclaimer the report states that the views are not necessarily the official view of the Bank of England, rather the authors of the paper.
11. US American Brooking Institution recently published a new paper on sovereign debt restructuring entitled ‘Revisiting Sovereign Bankruptcy’. It highlights creditors’ role in irresponsible lending, a positive statement in shifting focus away from placing blame on debtor countries for their debt burden. It also promotes the contribution of stakeholders, including NGOs and civil society, in discussions of debt restructuring. Jubilee Scotland welcomes these commitments. On the downside, however, there are only very weak proposals for a reformed scheme. Whilst understanding the need a statutory insolvency framework for sovereign states – a system through which debts can be restructured – rather than presenting alternative ways in which this can be done they point largely only to a wide range of challenges which are presented. Read a full account written by Jürgen Kaiser of Erlassjahr, a Eurodad member and a partner organisation of Jubilee Scotland.

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I don’t know what you were up to this Tuesday 11 June 2013 but I was demonstrating in front of the Edinburgh International Conference Centre. Well, almost. Because despite long negotiations with the police, we never made it through to the entrance of the building where the TEDGlobal Conference was taking place. No, we were not trying to get there without paying the £6000 admittance fee. We were rather chanting our opposition to George Papandreou giving a speech in the first session of the conference.

“Papandreou, who’s that?”, you ask. Well, you know, the former Prime Minister of Greece, elected in 2009 who served a two-year premiership during which time he was supposed to put an end to austerity measures. “Oh, so that’s why he was invited. To tell attendees how he managed that.”, you naively assume. Well, not exactly. By the way, I thought you were aware of the dreadful current situation in Greece! Mr. Papandreou “drew lessons from the Greek crisis”. I assume the many Greeks who took part to the protest were perfectly able to do that. “We know the lessons from the crisis firsthand. We don’t need lectures from the bosses”, their banner read [1].

Let us imagine anyway how George Papandreou’s speech sounded like.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for being here today. I understand you are expecting me to draw lessons from the Greek crisis. When I came into office in 2009, I inherited a fair amount of debt, to say the least. After meetings with my European colleagues and elected – but mostly non-elected – officials, I got convinced that the best way to tackle the Greek debt and deficit was to get the country into deep recession. The best way to achieve such a result was of course to implement austerity measures, designed in agreement with the Troika, that is the European Central Bank (ECB), the International Fund (IMF) and the people of Greece. I’m kidding, I meant the European Commission (EC).

Of course it did not matter whether or not the same people who had voted me in agreed with these measures. They were quite opposed to it by the way. As soon as we started reducing the minimum wage and pensions, cutting public spending, privatising and making civil servants redundant, they responded by organising massive protests and general strikes. I had a ready-to-use solution though. It was not the first time such policies were imposed against the will of the people. I could count on the IMF’s decades-old experience with Third World countries and on my own country’s history for that matter [2]. Now, if you find yourself faced with opposition, do not slow down the process and keep going. Ideally you would even buy state of the art military equipment and show no mercy for the protesters. Do not forget to criminalise workers’ ability to defend their rights. Naomi Klein calls this efficient combination the “shock doctrine”. In the end, your opponents should grow tired and look powerlessly at the social fabric of the country being ripped apart [3].

How can you assess my success? Not only Greece fell into a deep recession, it is now also facing a humanitarian crisis. Thanks to widespread poverty, people can no longer afford medication, to heat their home, to go to the hospital or to send their children to school. 21% of people now live in poverty and 62% of young people are unemployed. But it is the price they pay for the collapse of the international financial system, bank bail-outs, speculation, the euro and the failure of the successive Greek governments to implement a fair and effective tax system. As you know, “we’re all in this together”. In addition, we cannot be expected to cut on military expenditures, this money goes into the pockets of French and German military industries. So, in addition to reduction in wages for those lucky enough to have a job, we decided to sell out water, energy and railways and to increases taxes, for everyone. Isn’t it a brilliant idea? We ask the average population to pay more with less money. Hence the rise in the number of people committing suicide and the rise of the far right .

 I am happy to announce that Golden Dawn had Members of Parliament elected in the last elections. With massive support for the party within the police, racially motivated violence can go on with impunity. You can also add to my record that life expectancy is due to fall and the Greek debt to go up this year. Let’s be honest, the point of all that was not really to reduce it anyway. [4]“

Fair enough Mr. Papandreou. Now, I know most countries in Europe are tempted to follow suit. However, in a democracy, you should take people’s opinion into account before you go ahead with measures which seriously undermine human rights. If the only way you found to pay back the debt is to cut on healthcare and education and to increase poverty, then it certainly means it is unpayable. As such, it should not be repaid. All the more that if a debt audit is to publicly uncover where the debt came from, who benefited from it and whether and how it should be repaid. Should the Greek people pay for the 108 billion euro required to bail out the banks for instance? Finally, if force has to be employed to push the austerity measures through, this is another indication that the debt is illegitimate. Illegitimate debt actually builds on the concept of odious debt, presented for the first time in 1927 by an economist called Alexander Sack. Odious debt is also based on three prerequisites. First the loan has to be received by a government without the approval and knowledge of the people. Secondly the loan is not spent on activities beneficial to the people and finally the lenders know of this situation. Ironically, this concept has been used several times by the United States to repudiate debt, most recently in Iraq. That the members of the Paris Club asked for the concept not to be officially mentioned was not a reason not to appeal to the concept. Instead Mr. Papandreou, you gave up the sovereignty of Greece and defaulted on the Greek people.

You did not get out of the building Mr. Papandreou in spite of us chanting “Papandreou get out! We know what you’re all about: cuts, job losses, money for the bosses!”.

 You cannot deny you – and your successors – implemented the cuts and the job losses. As to the “money for the bosses”, two examples will speak for themselves: the national lottery was privatised despite the fact that it was highly profitable and one gold mine in the north of the country was sold for £9.5 million whereas it is believed to have gold and copper worth £8 billion. Other leaders showed more boldness than this though.

Some governments have refused to pay the debt. Countries such as Ecuador, Argentina or more recently Iceland defaulted, audited their debts or insisted their own terms for repayments. In Argentina, it took the President having to flee in helicopter under popular pressure. Not surprisingly, these countries all fare better than Greece, Spain or Portugal. Ecuador even went further and passed a constitution which prohibits the socialisation of private debts. Beforehand, an audit reviewing all debt contracts from 1956 to 2006, had proven the debt was odious, illegitimate and unconstitutional. During the 1980s and 1990s, Ecuador had spent 50% of its budget on debt repayments and 4% on healthcare. Rafael Correa, elected in 2006, decided debt repayments would no longer prevail on life. Thus, Ecuador declared the cessation of payment for 70% of Ecuador’s debt in bonds. But I guess you were not really willing to go against the neo-liberal agenda. People are though. They are prepared to take to the street. They already have in Scotland to call for the bedroom tax to be axed and it is no surprise people here were keen to hold you accountable Mr. Papandreou. It is not worth putting the blame on Brussels and financial markets [5], you also share some responsibility.

[1] Helen Walters, “Protesting Papandreou: Anti-auterity demonstrators at TEDGlobal 2013?, TED  Blog.

[2]  Katerina Kitidi and Aris Hatzistefanou, Debtocracy, 2011

[3] Nick Dearden, “Nick Dearden blogs from debt campaigner delegation to Greece”, Jubilee Debt Campaign.

[4] Nick Dearden, “Nick Dearden blogs from debt campaigner delegation to Greece”, Jubilee Debt Campaign.

[5] Helen Walters, “The failure of leadership in politics: George Papandreou at TEDGlobal 2013?, TED Blog.

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The post Illegitimate Greek Debt appeared first on Jubilee Scotland.

By Charlotte Snelling.

For much of the post-war period, Guatemala’s past has been a story of dictatorships, terror, and genocidal regimes. It is estimated that 200,000 people have died as a result of murder, torture, and extreme poverty whilst the country continues to be affected by a legacy of successive odious governments. It remains one of the most impoverished countries in Latin America and ranks at just 131 on the United Nations Human Development Index, out of a total of 187 countries. In the Americas, only Haiti ranks lower.[1]

A recent report by Jubilee Debt Campaign has been launched to investigate the build up of sovereign debt in Guatemala and the role this has played, and continues to play, in reproducing poverty across the country, particularly in its rural areas. It looks at how debt has been accumulated, the impact on the country’s economy, society, and population, as well as the steps needed to ensure the people of Guatemala are not left paying for the illegitimate actions and unfair treatment endured at the hands of their former leaders.

Guatemala has a long history of debt and exploitation by foreign powers. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the wave of terror was at its highest level, foreign lending to the country increased substantially. Successive loans of between $100 million and $300 million every year were granted from 1978 to 1982 and by 1985 Guatemala’s debt had reached $2.2 billion, an increase of over $2 billion in just 10 years. The majority of this debt was owed to multilateral institutions, in particular the World Bank, and today the country is still paying these institutions back over $400 million every year. This undoubtedly has important implications for Guatemala’s ability to rebuild and develop its economy alongside providing essential services to its citizens. Money which could otherwise be spent on moving people out of poverty and developing essential infrastructure is being shipped out of the country and into the pockets of Western lenders.

Guatemala, March 2009. Dozens gather to commemorate the 27th anniversary of the Rio Negro Massacre at Pak’oxom Peak in 1982. Photo: James Rodríguez / MiMundo.org

Significantly however, the loans granted to Guatemala were crucial in supporting the decades of terror its population endured, funding ill-conceived, unsustainable projects which impoverished families and led to displacement and destruction of rural communities. The Chixoy Dam is just one example but one which highlights some of the worst effects of the World Bank’s irresponsible lending. [2]In the late 1970s and early 1980s the Chixoy Dam project, $400 million of its budget financed by the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank, acted only to exacerbate levels of violence and persecution against Guatemala’s indigenous people. In seeking to create a new reservoir as part of the project, the population of the Rio Negro region were threatened with eviction. When the local population resisted this pressure to move, their opposition was then exploited by the government as justification for counter-insurgency and increased violence against the Rio Negro community. It is estimated the project forcibly displaced more than 3,500 Mayan community members and led to 6,000 families suffering loss of land and livelihoods, with more than 400 people were massacred because of their opposition to the project. For the survivors the impact continues to be felt. A Probe International Report from 2001 states: “members of the Rio Negro community live in extreme poverty in comparison to neighbouring communities. However, before dam construction, the community enjoyed, relatively speaking, a high standard of living.”[3] Furthermore, World Bank loans for this project (and a second Chixoy Dam project in 1986) have cost Guatemalan governments $100 million in interest. The Chixoy Dam is a single example within a large back catalogue of odious debts originating from multilateral lending to Guatemala’s past dictatorial regimes. Worryingly the World Bank appears content to continue lending money to the country for new projects which threaten to exploit and impoverish even more communities.

A mural in Pacux, home of the Rio Negro survivors. http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/1442-guatemala-the-forgotten-spirits-of-rabinal

As Barbara Rose Johnston at the Center for Political Ecology states, “the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank… loans were the primary source of foreign aid to a nation ruled by a military dictatorship engaged in systematic state-sponsored destruction of Mayan peoples”[4]. Debt accrued in the period was loaned to illegitimate and unaccountable governments of which the lenders were well aware whilst only minimal, if any, token investigations into possible impacts of projects were conducted. It is unjust for new governments to be saddled with these debts and responsibility must be shared by the countries and multilateral organisations which funded and supported projects at the expense of the Guatemalan people.

The experience of Guatemala and this new report show that something needs to change. Not only should these illegitimate and destructive debts be cancelled, the accumulation of new odious debt has to be prevented. Lobbying for an audit of the debt in Guatemala and campaigning to force the World Bank to overhaul its current policy and apply ethical principles of justice, fairness, and sustainability to its future lending will be vital in this process.

Importantly though, we should also be looking closer to home. In the UK, UK Export Finance (previously the Export Credit Guarantee Department), a semi-autonomous government body existing to support UK exporters to enter in to international markets considered risky and where the likelihood of failure is high, has been responsible for numerous dodgy deals similar to that seen in Guatemala. Deals where UKEF is involved are typically made in the arms trade, aerospace or fossil fuel related industry (over 75 percent of UKEF’s observable transactions) and are often based in countries with unstable governments, despotic regimes, and areas of conflict, which further compounds their negative effects. Egypt, for example, owes the UK approximately £100mn which includes loans for arms made to the regimes of both Mubarak and his predecessor Sadat. Between 1985 and 1986 UKEF supported £250mn of arms sale loans to finance a tank factory near Cairo and a military city west of Alexandria.[5] As in Guatemala, the Egyptian people are now left paying for the actions of the governments which previously oppressed them.

Scotland has an opportunity to take a stand against unethical lending. It seems possible that, whatever the result of the referendum, Scotland will be given the powers to create export credits. We must campaign here to ensure that this agency will not follow the route of corrupt deals, human rights abuses and disregard for environmental considerations that has characterised UKEF, but instead lead the way in being a positive and socially responsible export agency, setting an example internationally of how exporters can be supported in a way that is ethical and fair[6].

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The post Guatemala: a study in human rights abuses appeared first on Jubilee Scotland.

Economics on the one hand, and justice and human rights issues on the other hand, are often discussed as separate phenomena; as ways of looking at the world that don’t connect or intersect. But I believe that it’s of fundamental importance that we consider them alongside each other. In this blog I would like to use the example of Egypt’s arms debt to the UK to argue this point, touching on the gaps in international law and the importance of lending in the often violent shaping of the political map.

Jubilee Scotland is campaigning at the moment alongside its sister organisation – Jubilee Debt Campaign – for the cancellation of $100 million is owed by the Egyptian people to the UK government.

We are asking for it to be cancelled because we believe it to be an odious debt. An odious debt is one taken on by an unelected dictator – in this case Hosni Mubarak – the repayment for which is then demanded from the people of the country. This is the moral equivalent of someone breaking into your house and taking out a huge second mortgage against it, which you then have to repay when you get back into the house.

This would be enough to make the debt odious, but in the case of Egypt there is another layer to consider. The debt was used to pay for Rapier and Swingfire missiles, Lynx helicopters and a tank factory, weaponry which would actually have been used to shore up the illegitimate Mubarak regime. So to use our previous analogy, the house owner is also having to pay for the weapons that kept them out of their own house

Unfortunately, international law doesn’t recognise the concept of odious debt. This ties into the wider fact that it only recognises sovereign states and leaders; individuals, or whole peoples even, have no personality in its eyes. To go back to the house example, national law would seek to protect the interest of the party whose house had been stolen, but international law, if it operated the same way, would recognise the existence of the house, but assume that whoever was in charge of the house was the rightful owner – a kind of ‘finders-keepers’ approach to ownership. It is not a Code of Law in the true sense, as first formulated in ancient Babylon, because it does not protect the weak against the strong. It’s a system in which individuals – and whole peoples – are totally exposed to the Great Predators of the global economy: dictators, arms manufacturers, and lenders.

Mubarak’s arms debts are owed to a branch of the UK government called the Export Credit Guarantee Department (now renamed as UK Export finance), who use British tax-payers’ money to underwrite ‘high risk’ exports such as arms deals, meaning that both the arms exporter and the dictator remove themselves from the equation, leaving a debt owed by the people who suffered from the deal to us, the UK taxpayers.

The Export Credit Guarantee Department are the UK’s Export Credit Agency. Every major world power has one of these bodies, whose job it is to promote and support risky investments overseas. By using tax-payers’ money to underwrite deals they totally transform the risk profile of these risky deals, in effect creating a market where otherwise there wouldn’t be one.

For decades, Export Credit Agencies such as the ECGD have been used to set up trading relations with dictators in all parts of the world, including President Suharto in Indonesia and President Marcos in the Philippines. Their activities have provided domestic weapons manufacturers with stable overseas markets, have shored up regimes sympathetic to the West and have ensured a steady flow of debt repayments.

Export Credit Agency lending forms part of a wider portfolio of lending and aid – and it’s worth knowing that to qualify as ‘Overseas Development Assistance’ (the most widely used concept of aid) capital flows only have to have a 25% component of grant finances. This lending has been used for many decades to shape the map of the world, and to ensure that governments sympathetic to lending powers remained in charge of the house.

By sympathetic, we mean sympathetic to the supporting superpower, rather than sympathetic to the people of the country. As Franklin Roosevelt famously said of Nicaragua’s dictator Somoza, ‘he may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.’

Because the bloody origins of many of these debts are not widely discussed, all debt campaigners are frequently asked whether we should in fact cancel debts to poor countries without being very vigilant on how the money is spent. To my mind this would be shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. In the case of an Egypt or Indonesia the money for these debts has already been spent by a dictator on arms – often under the lender’s very vigilant eye.

Cancelling the debts is morally essential because it’s wrong to keep collecting money from the people whose oppression we have unwittingly colluded in. But if we are serious about stopping oppression we need to put a stop to bad lending, not just cancelling pre-existing bad debt.

In 1997, when Robin Cook became Foreign Secretary, he spoke of an ‘ethical foreign policy’. This statement was widely derided at the time as being a joke. In 1998, the scoffers were to some extent proved to be right, when the UK’s Export Credit Guarantee Department underwrote a huge sale of jet-fighters to the Indonesian dictator Suharto. The phrase ‘ethical foreign policy’ – even the idea of having an ethical foreign policy – became at this point even more bankrupt.

This trend needs I believe to be reversed. We may view ourselves as individuals, or as citizens of the world, we may campaign or give as individuals, and strive as campaigners to change the international system but we should not ignore the large proportion of our individual global impact which is mediated through UK foreign policy. It’s for this reason that, as well as building individual links with debt campaigners around the world, and while campaigning for an international system through which odious debts can be recognised and cancelled as as such, Jubilee Scotland also campaigns – alongside Campaign Against the Arms Trade and Amnesty International – for the radical reform of the Export Credit Guarantee Department.

Find our more about the campaign to end unfair lending at www.cleanupexports.org.uk and Jubilee Scotland at www.jubileescotland.org.uk

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The post Finance and Human Rights appeared first on Jubilee Scotland.