Debt forgiveness is not a subject Ann Pettifor wants to discuss. Raise the term in description of the huge sums owed by poor countries to rich, and one's wrist is metaphorically slapped.
"Don't talk about forgiveness," commands Pettifor. "For that implies that something bad has been done, and forgiveness is required."
Better that the worldwide push for the removal of the crushing debt burden of more than 50 countries be called debt cancellation - crisp and comprehensive, something like Ann Pettifor herself. A former trade union official, Pettifor is the co-founder and co-ordinator of the British arm of Jubilee 2000, the movement to get the Group of Seven countries to cancel poor countries' debt to mark the year 2000. She is coming to Dublin next week to chair a seminar on the ethics of debt cancellation. Held at the Irish School of Ecumenics in Milltown, Dublin, the twoday seminar will contrast and compare Jewish, Christian and Muslim attitudes towards debt and the morality of writing it off.
About the correctness of such an act Pettifor has no doubt. "This transfer of wealth from poor to rich must end," she says. "Our movement is talking about 52 countries, mainly in Africa, but also in Latin America and South-East Asia. On average in these places, for every dollar in aid going to them, $11 is coming back servicing the national debt."
Jubilee 2000 has a low profile in most people's consciousness, but the enormity of the debt burden for developing countries was brought home when Hurricane Mitch struck Central America in October. Mainstream news bulletins compared the aid which was gingerly offered to Honduras and Nicaragua with their daily bills to the rich West. Honduras already has debt of more than $4 billion. "To service this Honduras pays $1.5 million a day. Britain, for example, was offering £1.5 million in aid." That would pay about two days worth of debt, leaving the vast sums of reconstruction and social assistance necessary untouched.
Ann Pettifor argues that the financial system embraced by the G7 (Russia makes it a Group of Eight on paper, but with Russia's financial woes is probably best left out of the equation) runs against logic, let alone compassion. "In our domestic financial arrangements we have bankruptcy law. In Dickens's time people were sent to prison with their families if no money was forthcoming to pay their debts. Then society realised the futility of this - you can't get blood out of a stone - and bankruptcy legislation became common, which recognised that. But there is no international bankruptcy law. So you have a situation where a country like Tanzania has to take funds away from health, clean water and education to pay its huge debts."
The name and concept of Jubilee 2000 comes from the Bible. The book of Leviticus makes the specific command, that every seven years the land should be restored, the slaves freed and debts cancelled. The word "jubilee" (derived from the Hebrew word "yobel", for the goat's horn with which the start of the celebrations was blown) is actually used, and this feature is common to Christian and Jewish traditions. The Catholic Church has had its eyes fixed on the year 2000 for Jubileo 2000 Roma, a more wide-ranging marking of a year with a profound psychological impact, if nothing else.
The current Jubilee 2000 debt movement started to operate in the mid 1990s, with gradually bigger actions such as the demonstration at the G7 conference in Birmingham last year, when 70,000 people encircled the convention centre where the Western leaders were meeting. The movement does not get involved in prissy arguments about when the new millennium starts (January 2000 or January 2001), but its activities will extend into the year 2000. The main event now being planned is a huge rally in Cologne in June of this year, when the G7 meets again, to dwarf the action in Birmingham. "We also have some very good, high-profile supporters," says Ann Pettifor. "In Ireland our main supporter is Bono, and the other members of U2. In Britain, Anthony Hopkins is very interested, and the comedian Jo Brand is getting involved. In the US we have the Reverend Jesse Jackson and Muhammad Ali."
Jubilee 2000 - not to be confused with another outfit of the same name, proliferating on the Internet, whose aim is to create a new cyberspace universe for the year 2000, and whose literature is studded with quotations from the Beatles - operates mainly in the G7 countries (the US, Canada, Britain, Italy, Canada, Germany, France). The response has mostly been positive, although Pettifor says it has been slow to get off the ground in France, where the social tradition is that the government looks after the poor and individuals are less conditioned to charitable intervention. A petition for the cancellation of debt is being circulated in 130 countries.
Pettifor was recruited by the coalition of aid agencies working on debt cancellation in 1994. She is well tailored for the job. "I was born in South Africa and spent some years in Tanzania, which was a formative part of my life - that feeling for Africa is what drives me."
Raised an Anglican, she attended a Catholic convent school, and had a strict Calvinist father. "I gave up on the established churches as a young woman, but Christian values are deep in my psyche," she says. "Fundamentally I believe that God has given bountiful gifts to the world, but he has also placed a responsibility on us to be fair in their use."
This feeling, with her background in the labour movement (she worked as a fixer for Ken Livingstone when he presided over the greater London Council in the volatile Thatcher years), gave her the credentials for a finely-balanced act.
The Ethics of Debt Conference takes place at the ISE, January 12-13th, and other participants include the Columban priest Father Sean McDonagh and Sheikh Dr Zaki Badawi, principal of the Muslim College in London. Tel 01-2601144 or email ise.ecum@tcd.ie