Help support debt relief for Haiti today and make sure your Member of Congress also knows that even more impoverished nations need immediate debt cancellation.

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January 27, 2010

Urge Treasury to Support

Debt Cancellation for Haiti

Dear Colleague:

We ask you to join us in sending a letter to the Honorable Timothy Geithner, Secretary of the Treasury, to urge him to support canceling Haiti’s debts in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake that occurred on January 12, 2010.

The Government of Haiti cannot afford to invest in humanitarian relief, reconstruction and development efforts, while continuing to make payments on debts owed to multilateral financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the Inter-American Development Bank.  Even before the earthquake, debt service payments to these institutions were a tremendous burden that interfered with the ability of the Government of Haiti to meet the needs of its people.

We are urging Secretary Geithner to support three specific actions that should be a part of the international community’s response to this terrible tragedy:  (1) the complete cancellation of  all remaining debts owed by Haiti to multilateral financial institutions, (2) the suspension of Haiti’s debt service payments to these institutions until such time as the debts are canceled, and (3) the provision of additional assistance to Haiti in the form of grants so that the country does not accumulate additional debts.

Please join us in urging Secretary Geithner to support debt cancellation for Haiti and allow the Government of Haiti to use its meager resources for the needs of its people.  The letter is on the reverse.  If you have any questions or would like to sign on to the letter, please contact Kathleen Sengstock of Congresswoman Waters’ staff at 52201.

Sincerely,

______________________________          ______________________________

Maxine Waters                                           Ileana Ros-Lehtinen

______________________________          ______________________________

William Delahunt                                                Donald Payne

______________________________

Barbara Lee

January __, 2010

The Honorable Timothy Geithner

Secretary of the Treasury

Dear Secretary Geithner:

We are certain that you share our concern for the people of Haiti in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake that occurred on January 12, 2010.

We are writing today to urge you to support three specific actions that should be a part of the international community’s response to this terrible tragedy:  (1) the complete cancellation of  all remaining debts owed by Haiti to multilateral financial institutions, (2) the suspension of Haiti’s debt service payments to these institutions until such time as the debts are canceled, and (3) the provision of additional assistance to Haiti in the form of grants so that the country does not accumulate additional debts.

As you know, in June of 2009, Haiti secured $1.2 billion in debt cancellation from its major creditors when it reached the completion point in the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative.  This was a critical step forward.  But even after this relief, Haiti still owes a total of $709 million in debts to multilateral financial institutions, including $447 million to the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), $165 million to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), $39 million to the World Bank, and $58 million to the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).

We welcome recent statements from officials at the multilateral financial institutions of their intentions to consider cancellation of Haiti’s remaining debts.  We urge you to use the voice and vote of the United States on the Executive Boards of these institutions to secure cancellation of all of Haiti’s remaining multilateral debts.  While arrangements are worked out for cancellation, we urge you to support a moratorium on debt service payments from Haiti to these institutions, without the accrual of interest.

We also welcome the pledges of additional financial assistance from international governments and multilateral financial institutions, as it is critical that all available resources be delivered to Haiti as quickly as possible.  However, we urge that all assistance be in the form of grants instead of new loans.

Specifically, we strongly urge you to work to ensure that the $100 million loan offered to Haiti by the IMF be provided on terms comparable to a grant and without onerous conditions.  We are encouraged by IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s recent statement that the IMF intends to work to cancel all of Haiti’s debts including this new loan.  We urge you to work with the IMF and the other multilateral financial institutions to make this happen.

Debt cancellation will allow the Government of Haiti to use its meager resources for essential humanitarian relief, reconstruction and development efforts.  We thank you for your consideration of our views on this critical issue.

Sincerely,

cc:     Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Managing Director of the IMF

Mr. Robert B. Zoellick, President of the World Bank
Mr. Luis Alberto Moreno, President of the IDB

Mr. Kanayo F. Nwanze, President of IFAD

Download (PDF, 38.93KB)

http://www.ijdh.org/pdf/headline6-6–08.pdf

Both Representatives have gone out on a limb for the poor of Haiti, and now they need you to tell your Representative to stand up with them. Haitians need you too: recent headlines remind us of Haitians eating cookies made of salt, butter and dirt, because they cannot afford food. While Haitians are forced to eat dirt, their government is forced to send almost $1 million each week in debt service to wealthy banks that were established to fight poverty. Over half of Haiti’s outstanding loans went to dictators like Francois “Papa Doc” and Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, who spent the money on fur coats, fast cars and death squads. Haiti’s poor are now repaying the loans, by eating dirt and by foregoing elementary education and basic healthcare.

The International Financial Institutions (IFIs) recognized that Haiti’s debt is unjust when they accepted Haiti into their debt cancellation programs last year. But these programs would only cancel about half of Haiti’s debt, after more waiting (a year or more) and only if Haiti makes changes to its economy that could exacerbate hunger (see Debt Cancellation for Haiti: No Reason for Further Delays, by the Center for Economic Policy Research).

Representatives Waters and Bachus have also introduced H. Res. 241, the Haiti Debt Cancellation Resolution, but they felt that issuing a quicker letter right now is warranted by the extreme suffering in Haiti. Their letter also seeks to broaden its appeal to Republican House Members who understand that debt relief is the just, the decent and the right thing to do, but disagree with H.Res. 241’s stance against IFI conditions placed on debt relief. The letter seeks to immediately alleviate poverty in Haiti by immediately stopping Haiti’s payments to the international financial institutions, which would allow the government to immediately invest the money in public services that can save lives.

$1 million per week would go a long way in Haiti, where half the population struggles to survive on $1 US per day or less. Please do what you can to keep that money in Haiti.

A call-in script is below. If you need more information, including fact sheets, analyses and an activist toolkit, see the Haiti Debt Cancellation section of www.HaitiJustice.org.

Phone Script to call your Member to cancel Haiti’s debt!

(If you are pressed for time, just saying the first paragraph will help. If you can, go through the whole script). If your Representative has not co-sponsored H.Res. 241, ask her or him to do that too!

My name is XXX and I live in YYYY.  I support debt cancellation to release resources to fight poverty in Haiti. I am calling to encourage Representative XXX to sign on to the bi-partisan letter to the Secretary of the U.S. Treasury, urging the immediate cancellation of Haiti’s debt.

Haiti is the most impoverished country in the Western hemisphere. Close to one in four children are chronically malnourished. People are forced to eat cakes made of dirt, because they have nothing else. At the same time, the government is forced to send almost $1 million per week to the World Bank and other banks that were set up to fight poverty.

The bi-partisan letter was issued by Representatives Spencer Bachus and Maxine Waters. To sign on or for more information, please contact Kathleen Sengstock in Representative Maxine Waters’ office at (202) 225‑2201.

Thank you for your time!