DROP THE DEBT

PILLAR OF SHAME BREAKING THE CHAIN

The sculpture, which is to be seen, on top of a Jubilee 2000 car, in the streets of Geneva during the social summit 2000, is a fragment of the "Pillar of Shame"-a sculptural Outcry, created by the Danish sculptor Jens Galschiot.

"The Pillar of Shame" is an international symbol of a crime against humanity and is already placed in Hong Kong, Mexico and Brazil where it symbolizes massacres done to the local population.

At the Geneva summit 2000 it marks the burden of debt that has felonious consequences for the developing countries, consequences such as: destruction and elimination. 52 of the poorest countries in the world are in urgent need of debt cancellation. These countries, of which 37 are in Africa, owe a total of $376 billions. About half of this is owed directly to individual governments – mainly Japan, the US, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Russia and Italy –the"G8". Most of the rest is ‘multilateral’ debt, owed to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which is effectively run, by the G8 governments. Debt repayments divert money away from basis life-saving health care in the world’s poorest countries. As a result of the debt crisis:

• The United Nations estimates that 19,000 children die each day in Africa because money is spent on debt repayments to the west rather than on clean water and sanitation. 
• Currently, no African country is able to spend more than 1 % of its budget on HIV/AIDS. As a consequence of this, life expectancy in Zambia is expected to fall from the present 37 years to 33 years.
• At least 50 per cent of the population in Peru is estimated to live below the poverty line. 

This is what Jubilee 2000 fight against. Jubilee 2000 is an international campaign to cancel the unpayable debts of the poorest countries in the year 2000, active in over 60 countries worldwide. Jubilee 2000 are calling on the Group of Eight (G8) to stop stalling and cancel the debts of the world's poorest countries when they meet in at their annual summit in Okinawa, Japan (July 21 - 23).

By now the campaign has somewhat succeeded. $13 billion of the debt has actually been cancelled, but there is still a long way to go. So, please HELP, support this campaign, be a part of the world’s largest petition for the cancellation of the Third Worlds debt. The next petition presentation will be to the G8 Summit in Okinawa, July 2000, but the petition continues until the end of the year.

Links: www.jubilee2000uk.org 

Sincerely,

…The Pope, David Bowie, Bono (U2), Mohammed Ali and the 22 millions of people that have already given their signature for a debt free world

To the 'Silent Death +5' index page (The Geneva Summit)

To the Silent Death index page (a happening in connection to the Social summit 95)