Off-track on dealing with debt
One of the eight goals – which world leaders signed up to in 2000 – covers debt cancellation, and they’re substantially off-track.
Goal 8, as part of the Global Partnership for Development, set the target of “dealing comprehensively with the debt problems of developing countries through national and international measures in order to make debt sustainable in the long term.”
Like all of the goals, the deadline for achieving this was 2015.
Yet while there has been some progress in cancelling debts in recent years – including some $88 billion of debts being cancelled through international processes – the debt problem is far from "dealt with".
Snail's pace
When Gordon Brown announced this week's UN summit last year, he said that the "pace has been too slow and uncertain" in meeting the goals.
In fact, as our Pick Up the Pace campaign highlights, only around 20% of unpayable poor country debt has so far been cancelled, leaving at least $400 billion more to be cancelled across some 100 countries, if governments are going to be able to meet their people’s basic needs – essential to meeting the other 7 MDGs.
Otherwise, developing countries will continue to spend five times as much paying off their debts every year as they receive in aid, and many will continue to pay more in debts than they spend on health, education and other essential services.
On top of this there is the fact that much international debt is illegitimate, since it comes from irresponsible past lending decisions by rich country governments and institutions.
Comprehensive
To deal comprehensively with the debt problem, world leaders need to not only cancel much more debt, but also introduce a new system to govern international lending – so that new unjust and unpayable debts don’t build up in the coming years.
Today's summit may well produce a reaffirmation of promises - but it will be the actions that campaigners pressure politicians to take in the months and years ahead that will determine whether the goals are really met.