Fundraising alone not enough to tackle global poverty
Nov 22 2009 by Jasbir Authi, Birmingham Post
“The seminal moment came during the first Red Nose Day in 1985,” she said.
“Although I had been fundraising through the late 60s and 70s, it dawned on me that we weren’t going to solve the world’s problems by this method.
“On Red Nose Day £26 million was raised, but because of the way the system works, the money was back in the rich countries within six hours because of the debt they were owed.
“That’s when I dropped fundraising and concentrated on parliamentary lobbying.”
Thanks to campaigners, debt cancellation has become a reality.
She said: “At that time there was no awareness of how crippling the debt was for the poor countries but then people started seeing the huge injustice of poor countries paying high interest rates to the rich.
“In 1998, as a group we realised that the world’s media was in Birmingham and we had to come up with something very visually strong which would be seen around the globe.”
And on May 16, 1998, with the world’s leaders in town for the G8 Summit hosted by Tony Blair, 70,000 people linked arms, encircling the streets of Birmingham city centre.
The Government underestimated the impact the peaceful protest would have and Mr Blair broke off from a country-house meeting to talk to Jubilee 2000, the predecessor to Jubilee Debt Campaign, the charity which organised the event.
For Mrs Miller the audacious scenes of 1998, were the first steps on a long journey to focus the world’s attention on the burden of debt for poor countries.
According to Jubilee statistics, the poorest 49 countries have debts totalling $375 billion while, for the poorest 144 countries, it is over $2.9 trillion.
Much of the debt of poor countries is left over from the 1970s and often arose through reckless or self-interested lending by the rich world.
Despite the mammoth task ahead of convincing the World Bank, the IMF, international bodies and the corrupt countries themselves to tackle debt, she remains optimistic that local faith groups are the crucial next step forward.
“It will be good to share these ideas and make faith leaders aware of how they can encourage their congregation about what they can do in a positive and caring way to bring about change,” she said.
