Canterbury

By Allan Reeder
Lambeth Conference Communications

Lambeth bishops got a quick lesson in the strong feelings on either side of the international debt debate, Friday, when World Bank President James Wolfensohn sharply criticized a video that opened the conference plenary on debt.

The video, Chains of Debt, focused on the debt problems of Tanzania and Jamaica. It was created by Christian Aid, associated with Jubilee 2000, a coalition of agencies campaigning for debt cancellation.

Mr. Wolfensohn said that the tape, used to introduce the debt issue to the conference, "would have you believe that I rather like children dying, that I have no faith, that my interest is to collect debts, that I have no understanding of education or health, that I know nothing about the impact of payments imposed by governments. And all I can say to you is that I believe that each of those assertions is wrong."

The video told stories from the developing world of a dying baby, children denied an education, and a cholera epidemic in Tanzania caused by the lack of clean drinking water. According to the tape, the government could not afford to create a sanitary water system because "30 percent of its annual revenue goes for debt repayment."

A woman interviewed on the video, called on the World Bank to visit the Jamaican slums to see the local impact of government debt repayments. But Mr. Wolfensohn responded that he had already been to the slums himself, visiting "the worst sections and segments of Jamaica and of Kingston."

Mr. Wolfensohn related that "I met with gang leaders who were armed, where I sat by the roadside . . . talking about how we could alleviate poverty, and where we as a bank have put $200 million into Jamaica to try and make life more tolerable."

Mr. Wolfensohn claimed that the World Bank was at the front line of tackling international social issues: "The highest item on our agenda on which we're putting $3 billion this year is education and health."

Programs initiated by the World Bank have "nearly eradicated River Blindness in Africa for 30 million people," he said. "We're the major fighter in the world against AIDS. We're the major fighter in the world against malaria. None of that is in your film. None of it.

"I am not angry about the film. I'm upset. I'm upset because it paints a picture of our institution which is quite simply wrong," said Mr. Wolfensohn. "I work with 10,000 people in the bank who are committed to poverty eradication. We do not get up every morning and think what we can do to ruin the world."

Hurdles to cancellation

The World Bank president outlined the limits to the World Bank's capacity to cancel debt. Even if the 180 countries participating in the bank "want me to forgive debt," despite a "balance sheet of 150 billion dollars, I can forgive 23 billion dollars," he said. "Why? Because the only capital I have is 23 billion dollars."

Since the amount that the bank can borrow to assist countries is restricted by the bank's capital, he appealed to the bishops: "Look at the realities of what you are suggesting."

If he uses his balance to cancel debt, he said, "I cannot do 75 billion dollars worth of business because I cannot borrow the money because the money I can borrow depends on the capital I have."

He also reminded the bishops that the World Bank is only one player in the complex network of international development loans. He said he constantly tries to convince governments to spend more to alleviate poverty. "They are not giving the money for either debt relief or for overseas development assistance at the rate that it should be done," he said.

Finding common ground

Mr. Wolfensohn said the conference should emphasize cooperation, not accusation.

"The reason that I have come to admire the Archbishop of Canterbury to such an enormous extent is that he has shown to me an openness to say, 'We're both fighting poverty. Let's see what we can do together,'" Mr. Wolfensohn said.

"The more positive thing that I would suggest as I conclude is that instead of fighting each other and leveling accusations, we focus on the kids that are dying, and on the children who are not being educated and on the horrors of poverty together," he said.

"Together we can do a lot. We have expertise. You have expertise. We know a lot about development. You know a lot about people and communities. You have the best distribution system of any NGO in the world. You are out there in the field with your flocks, you and other religions," he said. "And we can both service the poor better together and we can influence governments better together and I believe we can make a real possibility that our children will have a better chance of living in peace and prosperity if we work together."

Bishops react to president's remarks

Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane of Cape Town (Southern Africa), who spoke after Mr. Wolfensohn, said the bishops had not come to Lambeth "to cast stones on anyone, but are here to reason together and to find solutions at the dawn of this millennium."

Everyone is needed on this mission, including the World Bank and the IMF, he said. But when policies are skewed in favor of the creditors, it is reasonable to raise questions, he added.

Others said Mr. Wolfensohn had over-reacted.

"The response of the president of the World Bank to a rather tame film shows a level of intolerance and insensitivity which surprised even someone like me who did not expect much," said Bishop Alfred Reid of Montego Bay (Jamaica).

Bishop Reid, a member of the subsection on international debt, said, "It is not lost on me that the president of the World Bank devoted only five to seven minutes of his 25-minute speech to the actual subject of debt-the rest being nothing more than a defensive diatribe against the Christian Aid film. He left before the responsive speech by the Archbishop of Cape Town."

Kenya's Archbishop David Gitari said that the president of the World Bank, "should not have reacted all that bitterly against the film. After all the film was meant for educating people, not for criticizing the World Bank."

Mexico's Bishop Sergio Carranza-Gomez said, "I understand part of his reaction but I think he over-reacted. We cannot deny the fact that the bank and the IMF are really squeezing life from many of our countries."

Video producers stand by their story

Dr. Roger Williamson of Christian Aid told a news conference after the plenary that his organization stood by the video, and Worcester's Bishop Peter Selby (England), the conference's chair of the subsection dealing with international debt, publicly endorsed the video in the plenary's last address.

"Copies of the video are on the way for all the bishops," Bishop Selby said. "It is a gift from Christians in this country. They see it as a resource. I see is as an honoring of our conference and an honoring of the subject."

In the tape, a young boy tells how he was forced to drop out of school because his parents cannot afford to pay the fees instituted by the Tanzanian government as part of their debt repayment efforts. According to the video, 17 countries in Africa have fewer children enrolled in school now than they did in 1980 because of the school fees.

The video took particular aim at the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative of the World Bank and the IMF, claiming that it was too small an effort. "Europe spends on ice cream alone twice as much as HIPC," a United Nation Development Programme official says.

Mr. Anthony Boote of the IMF, one of the people quoted in the video, said at the press conference, however, that he felt the video so simplified the issues that it left an inaccurate picture.

"It didn't really characterize the problem [of abject poverty] carefully," Mr. Boote said. "There was poverty before there was international debt and there will be poverty" even if the debt is canceled.

Nan Cobbey, Katie Sherrod, David Skidmore, Lisa Barrowclough and James Thrall contributed to this story.