Jubilee Year, an occasion to cancel foreign debt
On 19th July 2024, Christian and Muslim African religious leaders gathered together in Kigali, Rwanda and addressed a joint statement to the G20, G7, United Nations, IMF and World Bank, calling for debt relief for Africa in view of the 2025 Jubilee of Hope
Taking the opportunity of a Jubilee year’s promise of renewal and hope (Rom 5:5; Isaiah 61:1 – 3; Qur. 2:280, 12:87, 3:139), all leaders join pleas for debt relief for Africa, through:
- Forgiving debts that are unpayable, without endangering the achievement of development and climate goals
- Implementing responsible lending and borrowing principles
- Mainstreaming risk sharing between creditors and debtors in debt contracts
- Scaling up access to resources for development in non-debt-creating and affordable terms
This statement recalls what Pope Francis said on 5th June in an Audience with participants in the meeting on “Debt Crisis in the Global South”, organized by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. In the final section of his address, Pope Francis discussed the upcoming Jubilee Year of 2025 with those words: “..The Jubilee Year was a tradition among the Jewish people, a year in which debts were forgiven. I would like to echo this prophetic appeal, which is more urgent now than ever, bearing in mind that ecological debt and external debt are two sides of the same coin that mortgages the future. Therefore, dear friends, the forthcoming Holy Year of 2025 calls us to open our minds and hearts to be able to untie the knots of those bonds that strangle the present, without forgetting that we are only custodians and stewards, not masters.”
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Source
- Heralding a Debt Jubilee in 2025 – An Agenda for Africa’s Economic Transformation, Restoration, Renewal and Resilience
- African faith leaders join pleas for Jubilee debt forgiveness
- Audience with participants in the meeting on “Debt Crisis in the Global South”, organized by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, 05.06.2024
- Addressing the Debt Crisis in the Global South – A Joint PASS/IDP Workshop
