Facing the debt-relief challenge together 5 Edition

• Published in: Journal of commerce (Newark, N.J.)
• Main Author: GEORGE CAREY & JAMES D. WOLFENSOHN George Carey is the archbishop of Canterbury and James D. Wolfensohn is the president of the World Bank in Washington
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IHS Maritime & Trade 18.06.1999
• Subjects: Debt management; Debt service

More than 1.3 billion people in our world today live in extreme poverty. Nearly 1.4 billion lack access to clean water and 3 billion live without basic sanitation. In 1999, 11 million children under the age of five will die of preventable disease. For those children who live past five, more than 250 million will work instead of going to school. Several hundred million of these poor live in countries where crushing debt stands in the way of lasting poverty reduction. How did we get here, and what can we do to reduce burdensome debt in the poorest countries? But such improvements did not take place everywhere, and today, for a number of reasons, dozens of poor countries find themselves severely in debt. The fact that the vast majority of this debt is owed to governments and government-owned organizations is important, for it means that we -- all of us -- are not only providers of development lending, but also creditors. It is up to all of us to come up with answers.As we approach the 21st century, there is reason for optimism. We are, perhaps for the very first time, working together as a world community on important issues of development. We are discovering that we share the same future. And we are finding that economics and spirituality -- each fundamental to human dignity -- are inseparable, and have much to learn from each other.