ABSTRACT

In 1982, Mexico defaulted on its external debt and the financial press announced the start of the ‘debt crisis’. In the years that followed, enormous sums of money have been recycled from low-and middle-income countries to their creditors in the North. Campaigning groups have arisen (such as the Jubilee 2000 Coalition in the 1990s) which have called for a cancellation of the debts of the poorest countries. This demand has been made mainly on the ground that the original sums borrowed have been paid back many times over, because of the interest payments attached to the principal sum. It has also been made with regard to the damage that is being done to human development. According to a report prepared for Oxfam, in Africa as a whole in the mid-1990s, ‘only one child in two [went] to school, [and] governments transfer[red] four times more to northern creditors in debt payments than they spen[t] on health and education’ (UNDP 1999a: 14, citing Oxfam 1998).