Treacherous conditions: How IMF and World Bank policies tied to debt relief are undermining development

As a result of the oil crisis induced interest rate hike in the 1980s, inappropriate lending, conflict, corruption and unfair trading conditions, developing countries have been unable to pay off the loans they were encouraged to take on in the 1970s and have become increasingly indebted. These countries are still paying millions of pounds back to the West in interest payments each year. For example, the forty-one poorest, most indebted countries owe some US$213 billion. This is money that could have been spent on education, health care or development in the indebted poor countries, helping to tackle their high levels of illiteracy, mortality and poverty.

The World Development Movement (WDM), and its network of supporters and local groups, has been campaigning on debt for the last 16 years. In the run up to the new millennium, WDM joined with many other campaigners, to form the Jubilee 2000 campaign. Jubilee 2000 proclaimed that there should be a debt free start to the new millennium and succeeded in putting debt cancellation at the top of the international political agenda. WDM is now working with its successors in the UK, the Jubilee Debt Campaign, to keep up the pressure.