Debt campaign

The World Development Movement has an honourable and proud record in leading the way - fighting for debt relief and the reduction of poverty around the world

Gordon Brown September 1998.

Something criminal is being done to the world's poorest countries. The World Development Movement's (WDM) debt campaign revealed evidence that leaders of rich countries collude to give developing countries an unfair deal. They force policies such as trade liberalisation, investment deregulation and privatisation onto the poor, in return for minuscule debt relief.

The debt campaign called for:

• an end to the unjust International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank economic conditions attached to debt relief
• the cancellation of all poor country debt under a fair, transparent and democratic process for obtaining debt relief

WDM debt campaign successes:

WDM has campaigned on debt for over 20 years. After Jubilee 2000 closed, most other agencies stopped debt campaigning. WDM however, decided more could be achieved, and so we became the most active group working on debt both individually and collaboratively.

This decision has been vindicated by the UK government now accepting that many poor countries need 100 percent debt cancellation; that International Monetary Fund (IMF) gold should be used to part fund cancellation; that more countries than those on the existing list of 38 Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPCs) need debt cancellation; and, as a result of our Colludo campaign, that requiring economic policies, such as privatisation and trade liberalisation, to be implemented in return for aid is wrong.

The UK has now stopped attaching such economic policy conditions to UK aid provision.