Synod debates world's debt

A speaker at the General Synod yesterday said the cancellation of debt owed by the world's poorest countries "should be no business of this synod".

Mr Hilary Morrison from Down diocese was responding to a motion calling on the countries attending the G8 summit in Japan next July to continue the process of debt cancellation and to address the elements in international trade agreements which "disadvantage poor countries".

It further requested that the resolution be conveyed to the Prime Minister of Japan. The motion was proposed by the Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Walton Empey, and seconded by Bishop Michael Mayes of Kilmore.

Mr Morrison described the proposal as "misguided, however well intentioned" and said it amounted to asking the taxpayers of the G8 countries to pay up in a situation where the main beneficiaries would most likely be corrupt rulers and governments who would "laugh all the way to their Swiss bank accounts". The motion would not benefit the poor, he suggested.

Dr Empey said he was "absolutely appalled" at Mr Morrison's comments. He asked whether it was right that the black people of South Africa should now have to pay debts incurred by their former white government which had used the money to keep them down.

He also referred to the Philippines, saying 43 cents from every US dollar was spent in funding debt incurred by a corrupt administration. He suggested that financial institutions which lent to such regimes were guilty of corruption.

Proposing the motion at the beginning of the debate, Dr Empey pointed out that of the 590 million people in sub-Saharan Africa, 250 million did not have access to clean water. Some 220 million survived on less than $1 a day, while 130 million children, equal to all the children in Europe and the US, received no schooling.

These were "shocking and appalling figures" and "repayment of debt has a large part to play in them", he said.

He was sceptical of cancellations already announced because they had only cut half the debt of the most deeply indebted countries.

Bishop Mayes spoke of "the sheer cynicism of those operating the financial structures of the world" and warned that this needed to be kept in mind.

He noted that the £60 billion in debt relief announced at the Cologne summit last year would be seen as £30 billion if calculated in another way. He hoped the synod would recognise the extreme seriousness of the issue.

The motion was passed.