IN JUBILEE'S DEBT
It has given new hope to the third world
Two years ago almost to the day, we first wrote in these columns of Jubilee 2000's "glorious bravado" in asserting "that human beings have the capacity to right huge structural economic injustice". We sponsored it as our millennium campaign. Yet we scarcely imagined the scale of its future achievements, which the Guardian will celebrate in its New Year's Eve edition tomorrow.
Back in 1997, veteran debt campaigners were looking back on 20-odd years of hard work with sadly little to show for it. But then Jubilee 2000 made a complex economic issue catch fire, drawing thousands on to the streets of Birmingham in 1998 and Cologne in 1999 at the G7 meetings. Partner coalitions emerged in 89 countries, drawing millions into a worldwide debate about globalisation, inequality and justice. The petition shot past its first target and; now 17m people have signed.
At first, politicians were wary. But Jubilee 2000 matched street campaigning with persistent lobbying in London and Washington. They began to find allies. An unusual love-hate relationship developed with the chancellor, Gordon Brown. Though he readily admitted that the campaign created the political culture which enabled him to act, he was irritated by the campaigners' inability to appreciate the realities of international diplomacy. But both sides could join in celebrating the deal in Cologne to cancel $100bn of debt, as well as Mr Brown's Christmas surprise of 100% cancellation of UK debt two weeks ago.
Huge problems remain, some of which we shall look at tomorrow. Aid budgets have continued to shrink at a rate which dwarfs the relief so far received and the UN's agreed target of halving world poverty by 2015 is already absurdly unrealistic. Yet Jubilee 2000 has injected a note of optimism into the millennial gloom for the billions in the developing world. It has wrong-footed those who mumbled about western compassion fatigue.
It has pioneered a new form of global net activism in which thousands of activists and communities are in regular contact, unleashing a form of solidarity which flexed its new political muscle during the WTO meeting in Seattle. In all of that lies a hope for the new millennium that the decisions which affect millions of lives will not all be made in board and committee rooms, but also on the street and increasingly at the computer terminal.