[stop-imf] Sign on to add for debt cancellation with no structural adjustment conditionality

[Robert Weissman]

In this email from the Quixote Center:

Fantastic opportunity to sign on to an ad in the NCR by next Wednesday,
April 26

Text of the ad

Summary of the Sanders bill on debt and the IMF

__________________________________________________-

The whole world was watching as people took to the streets in Washington
DC on April 16 and 17 to protest the annual meetings of the IMF and the
World Bank. Now we look for an opportunity to require that these
institutions hear the message that moved people to risk arrest and rally
for a new development model and alternative economic policy.

Here is one opportunity.

The following full page ad will be placed in the National Catholic
Reporter, the primary national Catholic newspaper. We would welcome any
organization, religious community or parish, or union's signature on this
ad. WE ARE NOT ACCEPTING INDIVIDUAL SIGNATURES.

This ad encourages readers to call their Congressional Representative to
co-sponsor a bill offered by Representative Sanders from Vermont. A
summary of the bill is included in this email after the text of the ad. If
you would like a copy of the bill in full, please write to me, and we can
email it to you

If your organization would like to sign on to this ad, please respond to
this email with the full name of your organization. If you are able,
please send us a donation to help cover the cost of the ad. A $25 donation
or more can be sent to Quest for Peace at the Quixote Center. P.O. Box
5206, Hyattsville, MD 20782. The check can be made out to Quest for Peace
- ad. A $100 donation or more will get your organization's name in BOLD.
If you have any questions, feel free to write or call me at (301)
699-0042. ALL ORGANIZATIONAL SIGNATURES ARE DUE BY WEDNESDAY APRIL 26.



WHAT DID YOU GIVE UP FOR LENT?
 The children of the developing world have nothing left to give up for
Lent. They have been stripped of their basic needs =96 even their lives.
Harmful structural adjustment programs imposed by the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) are stealing the future of children in the poorest
countries by requiring struggling governments to take funding from health
care and education to service unsustainable debt.

 In Haiti the Missionaries of Charity, Mother Teresa=92s order, hold a
clinic twice a week at a church at the edge of Cite Soleil, the worst slum
in the world. It=92s a first aid clinic, really, but the volunteers who
spend time there simply call it =93the wound clinic.=94 Created to provide =
the
most basic first aid, the clinic seldom has anything more complicated than
a pile of clean bandages and antibacterial cleansers. On any given day the
line to get into the clinic stretches as far as the eye can see, and at
the end of the session hundreds of people are turned away.

 The volunteers and sisters exchange sorrowful looks as Wilner, a seven
year old boy with half his leg torn off in a car accident, is given
nothing more than a cleaning and a bandage. In Haiti, $5-7 million are
spent each month to service debt, and continuing structural adjustment
programs created by the IMF mean that the government cannot afford to
increase health spending. The parents of children like Wilner are
unemployed, the result of structural adjustment programs that shift aid
from agriculture to export-oriented industry.

 In Nicaragua a jeep bounces its way over the remnants of a road, long
washed away by Hurricane Mitch. The passengers peer out of the windows
through the dust at the rural communities still baring the mark of the
great winds and rains of late 1998. On the side of the road they recognize
Nicaraguan school buildings. Buildings which all look alike. They are blue
and white, simple one room square structures that are usually teeming with
children eager to learn. But some of these schools, even the newly
reconstructed ones, are empty. Why? The Nicaraguan government explains
that they cannot hire teachers. =93The IMF won=92t let us!=94 claimed an Ad=
visor
to President Aleman in January.  Education is the casualty of structural
adjustment programs.

 Every child in Nicaragua is born owing over $2,000 while the average
yearly income is only $250. These children cannot afford to buy their way
out of debt, and with structural adjustment programs eating away at
primary health care and education, their hope for changing the future is
slim.

    Who will speak for these children? Representative Sanders from Vermont
will introduce legislation in Congress to help ensure that the IMF cancels
the debts owed to it by the poorest countries, including Nicaragua and
Haiti. The Sanders bill also does the important work of eliminating the
role of the IMF as the gatekeeper of debt relief =97 and helps end
structural adjustment programs. Releasing struggling governments from IMF
control will enable these countries to reinvest in their children and the
health of their nation.

 In the Lenten Journey, Catholics take time to reflect on hardship in
preparation for the celebration of Easter. Now is the time to act on
behalf of the people of the developing world.  Satisfy these hungry faces
by making a call to your Congressperson and asking him or her to
co-sponsor the Sanders=92 bill. CALL NOW! Ask your Representative to
co-sponsor the Sanders bill, canceling the debts of the poor, and ending
the harmful IMF structural adjustment programs that steal their future.

YOUR REPRESENTATIVE CAN BE REACHED THROUGH THE CAPITOL SWITCHBOARD NUMBER
202-224-3121.

Primary Sponsors: QUEST FOR PEACE AND HAITI REBORN projects of the
Quixote Center

10 Days for Global Justice, Nelson, B.C. Canada
50 Years is Enough: U.S. Network for Global
     Economic Justice
Alliance for Democracy
Amherst College Community Outreach Program
Boston Province Sisters of Notre Dame Justice and Peace Committee
Center for Economic Justice
Church of the Incarnation
     International Peace and  Justice Ministry
Conference of Social Justice
  Coordinators of  Southern California
Congregation Justice Committee,
   Sisters of the Holy Cross
EPICA: Ecumenical Program on Central America and the Caribbean
Global Exchange
Globalization Challenge Initiative
Grandmothers for Peace International
Grassroots International
Haitian Apostolate Diocese of Worchester
Interhemispheric Resource Center
Marin Interfaith Task Force on Central America
Mercy of God Community
Nicaragua =96 U.S. Friendship Office
Office for World Mission - Archdiocese of Milwaukee
Our Lady, Queen of Peace Catholic Church Arlington, VA
Parish of Les Cayes, Haiti
Peace and Justice Center of Southern California
Project Health for Leon
Resource Center of the Americas
Results
Sisters of the Holy Names, California Province Leadership Team
Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia
Society of the Holy Child Jesus Leadership Team: American Province
The United Peoples
VT Mercy Peace and Justice Committee
Windows on Haiti

Summary of the Sanders Bill on Debt and the IMF

Debt bill attached.
                     In summary, the bill:

        * Finds that the IMF has harmed the poorest people in the world by
imposing harsh "structural adjustment" conditions on loans made to the
world's poorest countries.

        * Urges the President to commence immediate efforts within the IMF
and other multilateral organizations to require the IMF to cancel its
debts to the world's poorest countries and cease concessional lending to
these

countries for three years.

        * Urges the President to commence immediate efforts within the
IMF, the World Bank and other multilateral organizations to forbid the IMF
and the World Bank to impose policies that reduce access to basic social
services, undermine workers' rights, damage local small-scale enterprises
and farms, harm the environment or undermine democracy.

        * Urges the President to commence immediate efforts within the
IMF, the World Bank and other multilateral organizations to forbid the IMF
to

impose "structural adjustment" conditions in exchange for debt
cancellation.

        * Requires the President to establish an International Debt
Advisory Commission to (1) report to Congress on whether the IMF has
cancelled debts as required by this bill and what role the IMF plays in
poor countries; (2) audit IMF and World Bank debt in poor countries to
determine the social,

ecological and health impacts of such debt; and (3) recommend ways to
definitively resolve the debt crisis.

        * Requires the President to call for an international debt
conference to consider and enact proposals to definitively resolve the
international debt crisis.

        * Conditions appropriations for the IMF on the IMF meeting the
requirements of this bill.