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Lost and found
Why America's 80 million-strong Generation X may be losing its religion but finding its soul.
By Holly J. Lebowitz
[10/09/99]

America's first gay president
President Clinton mixes with drag queens and Matthew Shepard's mom at a big New York gay pride bash.
By Sara Douglas Hart
[10/09/99]

McCain goes Hollywood
The GOP presidential candidate sells the movie rights to his bestselling memoir.
By Jake Tapper
[10/08/99]

George W.'s New York homeboy
Floyd Flake, the former Democratic congressman, welcomed candidate Bush to Harlem with open arms.
By Jake Tapper
[10/08/99]

Colombia's powder keg
Washington's ill-conceived policy could hurt human rights and fuel the drug trade.
By Robert D. Lamb
[10/08/99]

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The idea has caught hold with some of the most conservative members of Congress as well as with the most liberal. Much of the credit goes to a loosely knit, grass-roots global campaign based primarily in churches and anti-poverty groups.

Operating under the banner of Jubilee 2000 -- recalling religious traditions of "jubilee" years when debts are wiped out -- these citizen campaigns have argued that enforcing payment of the heavy debts of very poor countries is immoral. In many cases the debts were incurred by illegitimate governments, like Mobutu's dictatorship in Zaire or South Africa's apartheid regime, and they are paid at a price of great human suffering by people who never benefited from them. They argue that it's bad economics. There is no way that countries can grow or reduce poverty if they are sending so much of their income -- typically 30 percent of the national budget -- to rich creditors. Finally, nearly everyone realizes that the debts are not collectable. If the countries were businesses, they would have declared bankruptcy years ago, and creditors would have written off the loss.

But it has taken massive campaigning by a movement that teams such diverse spokespeople as the pope and Harvard economist Jeffrey Sachs to win over leaders of the G7 nations and big multilateral financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Though the issue may not sound sexy, it has become the latest cause célèbre. This Saturday, a star-studded concert, dubbed Netaid, is to be telecast on VH1 and broadcast over the Internet in the hope of raising $22 million for the cause. Sponsored by the United Nations Human Development Program and Cisco Systems, it will cover concerts in Switzerland, Britain and the United States. The shows will feature performers such as Bono, Sting, Sheryl Crow, Puff Daddy and Jewel. They will promote both contributions and action to end poverty in developing countries. Jubilee 2000 is one of the main collaborators and beneficiaries of the concert.

Three years ago, several of the world's richest countries promised roughly $12.5 billion to relieve some debt of about 41 "heavily indebted poor countries," or HIPC. The total debt of these HIPC countries is about $200 billion, but it costs much less to cancel the debt because it is typically worth less than 10 percent of its face value because of their inability to pay.

In the spring of 1998, despite protests that the debt relief programs weren't working, the G7 countries refused to expand debt relief. By early this year, the governments of those countries were floating new proposals. When they met in Cologne, Germany, last June, they agreed to more than double the program to reduce debt owed to multilateral organizations like the World Bank and up to 90 percent of much bilateral, government-to-government lending.

By late last month the member countries of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, as well as the two organizations themselves, had committed nearly all the funding needed for the new, ambitious program. When the IMF and World Bank held their annual meeting in Washington in late September, President Clinton told delegates that he had asked Congress for $970 million to cover not only the U.S. share of multilateral debt but also the full cancellation of debts the HIPC countries owed directly to the United States. "It was a great symbolic gesture," said Oxfam spokesman Seth Amgott. "It put pressure on other countries to come up with more."

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