Cancel Haiti debt, world church head to tell leaders at Davos
Written by Peter Kenny
Geneva (ENI). The head of the world's largest grouping of churches, the Rev. Olav Fykse Tveit, is to tell the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos that Haiti's foreign debt should be immediately and unconditionally cancelled.
Tveit, a Norwegian Lutheran, who took over as general secretary of the World Council of Churches on 1 January, is due to attend the Davos summit later this week. His call for the lifting of the debt follows that of other religious leaders such as Ishmael Noko, the general secretary of the Lutheran World Federation.
In a statement made available to Ecumenical News International on 25 January, Tveit said, "The time has come for the international community – politicians, business and civil society organizations – to focus on how Haiti can become sustainable".
The WCC has announced that Tveit will take a message on Haiti to the meeting of the World Economic Forum in the Swiss winter resort of Davos, which gathers global political, financial and other leaders each year.
The forum has set aside time to discuss the situation in Haiti, which has been ravaged by a massive earthquake with a magnitude of 7 on the Richter scale and is quoted by international agencies as one of the poorest nations in the Western hemisphere. The Haitian government has said that the disaster killed 150 000 people, and maybe many more. Aid agencies have said that up to three million people remain in need of assistance.
Partner groups of the WCC, such as the ACT Alliance, along with the LWF are providing personnel and material assistance to Haiti in cooperation with United Nations organizations.
In his 25 January statement, Tveit said, "Authentic development for Haiti will take some bold steps by the international community, in addition to the current emergency efforts." He added that first among these steps was, "the immediate and unconditional cancellation of the country's foreign debt. It would be morally untenable to do otherwise at this time of extraordinary hardship and destruction".
On 22 January, the Lutheran World Federation's Noko had said, "I call for an immediate and complete moratorium on Haiti's debt service obligations and cancellation of the remaining debt."
Noko noted, "I call for international assistance to Haiti - including that now offered by the International Monetary Fund in the context of this emergency - to be provided in the form of grants, not loans such as that which set the newly-born republic on the road to intractable poverty."
The LWF general secretary also called for "international cooperation in repatriating funds stolen from the people of Haiti by former dictators". For the post-disaster period, Noko urged long-term international cooperation for education and the promotion of investment in Haiti.
Despite international financial institutions writing off US$1.2 billion of Haiti's debt in June 2009, the country's debt level remains at around $640 million, with annual payments of about $50 million required to meet interest payments on that sum.
Tveit said that, for the WCC, debt cancellation would be an important step in the right direction, although not a solution. He believes that the international community needs to show moral leadership, and make sure that "any financial assistance to rebuild the country comes as grants rather than loans".
Tveit said, "Those grants cannot be tied to the detrimental conditions that international financial organizations tend to impose on poor countries."
He added, "This is not just about helping Haiti but about empowering and working with its people towards a sustainable society: one that is based on justice."
(This story was provided and used with permission by ENI. Ecumenical News International is jointly sponsored by the World Council of Churches, the Lutheran World Federation, the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and the Conference of European Churches.)
