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By Tricia N. Henry
Caribbean Net News Staff Reporter
Email: tricia@caribbeannetnews.com
LONDON, England: The Finance Ministers of the Group of Eight (G8) industrialised nations will be meeting in Japan on June 13 - 14 to primarily to discuss runaway oil prices, but a group of international NGOs has called on the ministers to place the plight of the island of Haiti high on their agenda.
In an open letter to the G8 ministers, dated two days before the start of the summit, the various civil society organisations from the G8 Group of Nations and other European organisations are urging all G8 governments to “support the immediate multilateral and bilateral debt cancellation for Haiti or a moratorium on all debt service payments until such a time as the debt is cancelled”.
One of the concerned NGOs is the Haiti Advocacy Platform Ireland-UK (HAPI-UK), and its coordinator, Anne McConnell, issued a release stating that Haiti was facing a severe crisis and unless it was relieved of its million-dollar international debts, the people of Haiti would continue to suffer.
“As UK Chancellor Alistair Darling joins other G8 leaders in Japan this week, UK NGOs join others to call on him to support immediate debt cancellation for Haiti,” said McConnell. “Twenty eight UK, European, US and Canadian NGOs have spoken out and said that it is unacceptable for Haiti to continue to pay US$1million in illegitimate debt payments each year to the World Bank and other institutions while the people of Haiti suffer.”
Haiti is currently in its final stages of the World Bank/IMF Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative, but with over US$50million in scheduled debt to pay this year – more than a quarter of its spending on public health alone – the country is not expected to reach completion point until late 2008 at the earliest.
In 2009, Haiti is projected to pay out US$50.9million in debt service payments to its creditors. According to the 28 NGOs who signed the June 11 letter, if Haiti does not reach its completion point under the HIPC initiative the figure would rise to US$59.6million.
According to McConnell, advocates argue that these are funds that the Haitian government can ill afford to pay, and would be better spent addressing the island’s more pressing issues of food, health, the environment and other social services.
“Given the current political and social turmoil in the country, it is highly likely that completion point under the international debt relief scheme will be delayed,” it was stated in the letter. “This means that debt cancellation will happen too late for a country that cannot afford to feed its own people.”
Haiti is most notoriously known as one of the poorest countries in the Americas with around 80% of the population living on less than US$2 (£1) a day. The impoverished Caribbean territory has had a long history plagued with political, economic and social unrest – the most recent having been the nation-wide riots in April 2008 that gripped the country, caused by soaring prices of food and shortages of staples like rice, beans, flour and corn.
Members of the civil society organisations are calling for G8 leaders to use their influence within the Boards of major multilateral financial institutions to alleviate the current state of dire poverty plaguing the island.
“Leading UK NGOs urge ministers to take concrete action in Osaka - to use their voice and vote at the multilateral development banks to achieve immediate debt cancellation for Haiti - and a moratorium on debt payments,” said the release by McConnell.
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