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The Lutheran World Federation
Lutheran World Information |
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| 30.08.2004 |
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| Latin American Churches Begin Program to Challenge Illegitimacy of Foreign Debt |
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LWF Supports Awareness-Raising Efforts at Parish Level and with Northern Partners
GENEVA, 30 August 2004 (LWI) - By means of a new program to tackle the illegitimacy of foreign debt in Latin America and the Caribbean, Lutheran churches in region intend to stand up for the rights of the affected people. The Lutheran World Federation (LWF) area secretary for the Latin American and the Caribbean region, Rev. Martin Junge, said the program has officially begun its work in Argentina with the formal appointment of two coordinators, pastors Ángel F. Furlan of the United Evangelical Lutheran Church (IELU) and Juan Pedro Schaad of the Evangelical Church of the River Plate (IERP).
Furlan and Schaad will be administering the program at the local level through support provided by the LWF Department for Mission and Development (DMD). They have drawn up a plan that provides for intensive participation in the January 2005 Fifth World Social Forum (WSF) in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and in the April 2005 Conference of Bishops and Presidents of Lutheran churches in Latin America in Bogotá, Colombia. Apart from disseminating information on issues of common concern and sensitizing people at parish level, as well as training trainers, an international conference on illegitimate foreign debt is scheduled for September 2005.
The aim of the program, according to Schaad, is to make the issue of illegitimate and abhorrent foreign debt known at various church levels both in the North and South. Hence, agreement is to be reached with the churches and Northern agencies on an approach to the origin, composition and legitimacy of foreign debts. The plan also includes agreeing with churches and organizations in the North on a proposal for effecting international investigation into foreign debts, according to the former president of the IERP.
Furlan also expects some significant stimuli especially for the Argentine society as well as cooperation with other organizations and local ecumenical groups. A lot is being done in Argentina to encourage broad debate on the question of illegitimate debts. However, strong pressure from the media and from the rich and powerful linked to neo-liberalism has resulted in a general public opinion that these debts are a reality. But debt relief calls for negotiations on the best possible terms, as the former president of the IELU emphasized.
A further element of the program, together with the LWF member churches in the industrialized countries, includes exerting influence on Northern governments to obtain nullification of the illegitimate debts, a situation that would lead to writing off the debts.
At the April 2003 consultation for the Latin American and Caribbean region in San Salvador, El Salvador, in preparation for the LWF Tenth Assembly, Furlan had declared the “foreign debts of the Third World and of Latin America, which have already been settled several times over, as illegitimate and unethical.” The subject should be brought before a court of arbitration or the International Court of Justice in The Hague in order to clarify the fundamental issue of foreign debt illegitimacy, as Furlan stated in April 2003.
Schaad also supported clarification of the question by the International Court of Justice. “All of the credit granted to Argentina reveals so many infringements, both in regard to form and content, that it is essential to investigate how much we actually owe if we still owe anything at all. Therefore we can also not merely apply for the debts to be liquidated or cancelled because we would then be confirming the rightful existence of the debts.” The question remains, said Schaad, “to what extent the people and their representatives, who in any case were never asked, should be made responsible today for the dubious affairs of corrupt persons against whom criminal proceedings can no longer be brought.”
The subject of the foreign debt burden of developing countries has been a major concern among Lutheran churches especially the Latin American LWF member churches for more than five years. The churches in Argentina, Chile and Uruguay declared in September 2002 at Florianopolis, Brazil, that the various governments in the region had demonstrated a desperate will to pay off their foreign debts. Although the negotiations and re-negotiations required of them by international financial organizations and the privatization demanded had been carried out, the foreign debt had continued to increase.
The Lutheran church leaders criticized the unacceptable human, social and ecological price of the debt commitments which made it impossible for the governments to deal with the needs of their people. They argued that international law demanded that states ensure their people live in dignity, as stipulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in various international conventions. (780 words)
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