NICANET HOTLINE -- 6/7/99 Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit Nicaragua Network Hotline June 7, 1999 Action Alert [This weeks hotline is based on an alert issued by the 50 Years is Enough US Network for Global Economic Justice. We will resume next week with our weekly update on Nicaragua.] CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVE! TELL THEM TO CO-SPONSOR A BILL CANCELLING: IMPOVERISHED COUNTRIES' DEBT & IMF STRUCTURAL ADJUSTMENT Rep. Cynthia McKinney of Georgia will next Thursday (June 10) be introducing an excellent piece of legislation designed to do two things: (1) cancel debts owed by the world's most impoverished countries; and (2) get the IMF out of structural adjustment lending to impoverished countries. IMF-imposed structural adjustment policies have devastated the Nicaraguan economy, generating unprecedented levels of poverty, unemployment, and hunger. A report issued last week by the European non-governmental organization Redd Barna confirms that the number of Nicaraguans living below the poverty line has increased by 1.2 million in the last ten years. Currently, 44% of all Nicaraguan families survive on less than US$1 a day. The IMF has forced the Nicaraguan government to slash social spending in order to make payments on its wholly unsustainable debt. Health care and education, which during the 1980s were a basic right of all Nicaraguans, are now a privilege only accessible to an ever-shrinking minority. The impact of this legislation would be the freeing up of resources which could be devoted to improving the lot of some of the world's most impoverished and underserved people and eliminating from their countries the leading institutional enforcer of the stringent economic policies that have afflicted most Southern countries for the past 20 years. Rep. McKinney wants to announce this legislation in advance of a meeting of the Finance Ministers from the G-7 countries set for Saturday, June 12 in Frankfurt, Germany. That meeting precedes by a week the G-7 Summit of heads of government in Cologne, Germany. We expect that the Finance Ministers will be discussing their various debt relief proposals as they begin to merge them into a single plan the Summit can agree on. All indications are that the announced plan will be woefully inadequate. Rep. McKinney's legislation, which builds on the momentum of of the powerful international Jubilee 2000 movement, needs co-sponsors! She would like to announce the bill at a press conference on Thursday morning with the support of a good group of her fellow Representatives. **Please call your Representative and urge him or her to sign on as an "original cosponsor" of Rep. McKinney's Debt Cancellation Act of 1999.** Following is a summary of the bill, which you can use as a source of talking points in speaking with your Representative's staffer who deals with international finance. (If you would like the text of the bill, please contact us.) You can call the Capitol switchboard at 202/224-3121 to be connected directly to your Representative's office. Please tell the staffers you speak with to contact Merwyn Scott in Rep. McKinney's office (202/225-1605) to sign on as a sponsor. Emphasize the urgency of making a decision by June 10 in light of the upcoming G-7 Summit. For further information, call Soren Ambrose at 50 Years Is Enough / Alliance for Global Justice (202/544-9355; ) or Bob Naiman at the Preamble Center (202/265-3263 x277; ). *Summary of the Main Provisions of Rep. McKinney's Debt Cancellation Act of 1999* * Applies to the 41 countries designated by the World Bank and IMF as heavily indebted poor countries (HIPCs) plus Haiti. Would exclude any country where an "elected head of government is deposed by military coup or decree, unless the President determines that a democratically elected government has taken office." * Cancels bilateral debts owed to the U.S. by these countries resulting from concessional and noncessional loans, as well as guarantees and credits. * Denies U.S. funding to the IMF until: (1) it has canceled all debts in the same categories owed it by the HIPCs; (2) it has terminated its Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility (ESAF); and (3) the Treasury Department certifies that it is making no more structural adjustment loans, under any name, to HIPCs. * Encourages HIPC governments to apply the resulting savings to poverty reduction by restricting further benefits from the U.S.'s export credit agency, the Overseas Private Investment Corp. (OPIC), to HIPCs and projects in HIPCs where the President certifies that the funds made available by the cancellation of debts called for by the legislation have been used for poverty reduction. * Allows U.S. citizens legal standing to sue to ensure enforcement of the bill's mandates. This provision is included because of the IMF's long record of evading Congressional demands. ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytcamer-06.09.99-23:04:07-29571