Debt

Haiti’s Debt: 6 months on

Jul 12th, 2010 9:36 AM UTC
By Brie O'Keefe

Back in January more the 200,000 ONE members signed our petition to cancel Haiti’s external debt and help the country rebuild from the terrible earthquake that struck on 12 January.

6 months on we thought it would be useful to report back on what happened next.

At the handover of the petition during the G7 finance ministers summit in the small Arctic Canadian town of Iqaluit (the first ONE petition to be delivered above the Arctic Circle!) we welcomed the news that the G7 had agreed to support debt relief.

According to our friends at the Jubilee Debt Campaign Venezuela cancelled $295 million of debts at the end of January, while at the end of March the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank together forgave a combined total of $472 million.

That leaves Haiti’s only outstanding debts at the moment being held by Taiwan and the IMF. Taiwan is difficult as many of these debts are held by commercial creditors who are unwilling to forgive them. The IMF, however, is currently working on a process to cancel Haiti’s remaining debts, though this hasn’t happened as yet.

The process of rebuilding Haiti will be a long one, but as ONE members we can celebrate the fact that a country facing so many obstacles on the road to recovery has, at least, one less injustice to face: Haitians will no longer be saddled with the debts accumulated by previous governments.

Dirty practises cleaned up in the wash

Apr 9th, 2010 12:07 PM UTC
By Joseph Powell

At the end of the lifetime of a British Parliament there is a rather arcane process known as the ‘wash-up’. This is where the political parties negotiate the safe passage of some of the bills that ran out of time to pass before Parliament dissolves. Not the most transparent way of making law, but ironically this year there have been two highly significant pieces of legislation passed that will actually increase transparency in doing business, and make it harder for Western companies to do harm in Africa.

The first is the Debt Relief (Developing Countries) Bill, better known as the Vulture Funds Bill, which makes Britain the first country to ban profiteering on the back of poorer countries’ debt. Last November two Vulture Funds were awarded $20 million in the High Court in London from Liberia – the second poorest country in the world – for a debt dating back to the 1970s. This law is expected to make that verdict unenforceable. Congratulations go out to our friends at the Jubilee Debt Campaign for mobilising the support to get this bill through.

The second piece of good news is the passing of anti-bribery legislation which creates a new offence of bribing a foreign public official and a corporate offence for companies that fail to prevent bribery. Bribery hurts economic development by undermining good governance, discouraging foreign investment and wasting public money. Putting our own house in order legislatively is an important step in preventing British companies from contributing to corruption overseas. Whoever wins the election will need to be pressured to ensure that the law is fully enforced, but the Act is an important victory and followed hard work from development and anti-corruption agencies to ensure it was passed.

So all in all a good ‘wash-up’ for development and a positive end to this Parliament’s life.

Stop feeding the vultures!

Feb 24th, 2010 9:25 PM UTC
By Jessica Gomez-Duran

Activists from Jubilee Debt Campaign outside Dechert LLP’s office in London

This morning, our friends from the Jubilee Debt Campaign could be found outside the London office of the law firm Dechert LLP.

Why? Well, the law firm, in spite of its humanitarian credentials, has represented so called “vulture funds”. These funds are private investment companies that take advantage of the relaxed laws in British courts to buy up poor countries’ debt at dramatically reduced prices, and then sue the same countries for their full value plus costs. In the process, companies make excessive rates of profit. In fact, last November, Dechert LLP represented two funds in the High Court in London, winning a $20 million award against Liberia, one of the poorest countries on the planet.

The good news is that there is a Bill currently going through the UK parliament that aims to prevent such vulture actions against the world’s poorest countries. The UK Government also recently came out in support of legislation against vultures, saying that such legislation could save poor countries as much as £145 million. Yet Dechert LLP have opposed legislation against vultures, on behalf of several hedge funds, telling a Government consultation that legislation would be “unfair” and “unprincipled”.

To draw attention to all this, the Jubilee Debt Campaign organised a ‘Call to Charity’ this morning in front of Dechert’s London office, with a cake sale, some singing, people dressed as vultures, and a big sign saying ‘Don’t Feed the Vultures’. The central message behind the action was that we need to support Dechert LLP as it must seriously need funds if it has to take money from the world’s poorest people

An article in today’s Guardian covers the story well.

We’ll never know the true impact of the stunt, but one woman, while taking a cake on her way in the building, said that she had no idea that Dechert was working on these sorts of cases. Hopefully she and others like her in the office will talk about it and call into question their firm’s work. That was perhaps the worry of the people who called the police to try and end the cake sale. The polite officers however noted that the activists weren’t doing a thing wrong and moved them a mere 50 cm forward, as apparently that part of the pavement belonged to the law firm. It’s a good thing one doesn’t need a hunting license to hunt vulture funds, then we all would be really be in trouble.