The Trumpet Shall Sound

The trumpet shall sound is a very special moment in Handel's Messiah. It recalls the sounding of the horn on the Day of Atonement. On this great day in the Hebrew calendar there was the reuniting of Israel through the sacrifice for sin. When the Yobel (Hebrew word for horn) sounded it signalled the Jubilee to come, a time of radical repentance. From the word , "Yobel", comes the word "Jubilee". Pentecost also signalled a Jubilee of sharing and equity at the beginning of the Christian era.

We have lived in one of the bloodiest centuries, with true world wars, "holocausts" in Cambodia and Rwanda as well as Germany, new levels of neo-Colonial expression and a culture of multi-national greed in which whole nations have become completely bankrupt.

In response, Church traditions across the world are uniting in invoking the Jubilee theme to again call attention to the massive social injustices of today and to indicate there is One in whom the world can have faith as Saviour and Redeemer and Cleanser of our temples.

Jubilee 2000 is the name given to this movement which is demanding urgent action to bring about a one-off cancellation of the crippling backlog of unpayable debt for the world's poorest countries. The campaign was started in the UK in 1990, now includes "Debt Coalitions" in over 31 countries of the world, and aims to bring relief to the more than a billion poverty-stricken people in developing countries whose governments owe approximately $2000 billion to wealthy governments, banks and international institutions.

The preceding words, extracted from several articles and editorials set the scene for one of the features of this issue of the Quarterly Newsletter.

It is widely acknowledged that a major problem exists with respect to the most heavily indebted countries and that urgent solutions need to be found. Debt forgiveness is one aspect, but regarded as fruitless, unless it goes hand in hand with reforms. There are serious political, moral and economic issues to be addressed as well.

Other initiatives are taking place. At the 1995 Halifax Summit, Group of Seven (G-7) leaders urged the Bretton Woods institutions to develop a comprehensive approach to address the special problems of the poorest countries with large multilateral debt burdens. Just over a year later, at the 1996 annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, details of a new debt initiative for heavily indebted poor countries (HIPCS) were endorsed by the Interim and Development Committees.

The HIPC initiative represents a commitment by the international community, including for the first time all creditors, to act together in a co-ordinated and concerted way toward reducing the debt of the poorest developing countries. The aim of the initiative is to ensure that heavily indebted poor countries demonstrating a track record of sustained policy performance, are able to achieve overall external debt sustainability, strengthen their poverty reduction programs, and permanently "exit" from future debt rescheduling exercises.

It's a difficult issue that is certain to be opposed by many - but it does offer the wealthier nations of the world to express some compassion towards those who human speaking "haven't a hope" and are denied even the most basic things that we take for granted. Please read, think about and be ready to do your part.