SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
For Immediate Release
April, 07 2021, 12:00am EDT
Contact:
Email:,coord(at)jubileeusa.org
260 Faith, Labor and Development Groups Press IMF, G20 and White House on COVID Response
Ahead of Spring IMF and World Bank Meetings, World's Largest Unions, Human Rights Groups, Environmental and Religious Institutions Call for Aid, Debt Relief, Access to Emergency Reserves and Climate Protections
WASHINGTON
As G20, IMF and World Bank Spring Meetings convene virtually on global COVID response, 260 groups call for developing country aid and policies to prevent future crises and protect the environment.
Organized by Jubilee USA Network, 260 religious groups, anti-poverty organizations, labor unions, environmental and human rights institutions signed a letter on coronavirus crisis response to the White House, G20 and IMF.
"World leaders worked hard over the last year to tackle the health and economic crises spurred by the COVID pandemic," said Eric LeCompte, a UN finance expert who heads the religious development group Jubilee USA Network. Jubilee USA spearheaded the letter effort. "We must do more. Unless we take immediate action to solidify more aid and relief, we face lost decades of development and millions more will suffer."
The G20 agreed to suspend debt payments for 73 developing countries through next June and created a process for the same countries to reduce debt. The IMF announced it would cancel debt payments for 28 of the world's poorest countries into October.
In recent weeks, the G7 supported an allocation of emergency reserve funds or Special Drawing Rights (SDRs). Treasury notified Congress of support for the aid and the G20 is expected to announce support for SDRs this week.
"If the IMF and G20 move forward emergency reserves, it means right away developing countries can access more than $200 billion to fight the health and economic impacts of the coronavirus," stated LeCompte. "We will likely see another additional process where hundreds of billions of more dollars in Special Drawing Rights could be transferred from wealthy countries to developing countries for further support."
Major religious institutions lead the Jubilee USA letter to the IMF, White House and G20. The signers include: The Union for Reform Judaism, All Africa Conference of Churches, National Council of Churches and the Episcopal, Evangelical Lutheran, Presbyterian, Methodist and United Church of Christ Churches. The Unitarian Universalist Association and the largest representations of Quaker communities and Buddhist consortiums are on the letter. The US Conference of Catholic Bishops sent a separate, companion joint letter with Jubilee USA Network and Pope Francis called again for a debt relief process in his Encyclical Fratelli Tutti.
Counting their membership in the millions, labor bodies including the International Trade Union Confederation, United Steelworkers (USW), American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) and American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) joined faith groups on letter. Other signers include human rights organizations like Amnesty International and Pax Christi and also environmental advocates ranging from Amazon Watch to Friends of the Earth. Development groups were represented and included Islamic Relief, American Jewish World Service, American Friends Service Committee, Bread for the World, Action Aid, Oxfam, RESULTS and Health Gap.
On March 16th, Jubilee USA organized a roundtable with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and the highest-ranking leaders to specifically go over the calls in the Jubilee letter. A separate letter with 240 groups supporting SDRs was sent to the G20. The additional G20 SDR letter was coordinated by Jubilee USA and LATINDADD.
Read Jubilee USA's COVID-19 White House, IMF, G20 Letter here.
Read the joint US Conference of Catholic Bishops/Jubilee USA Network Letter to President Biden here.
Read about Jubilee USA's High-Level Roundtable with Secretary Yellen here.
Read Jubilee USA's release on the IMF'sGlobal Financial Stability report here.
Read Jubilee USA's release on the IMF's World Economic Outlook reporthere.
Read about the IMF extending a process to cancel debt payments for the world's 28 poorest countrieshere.
Jubilee USA Network is an interfaith, non-profit alliance of religious, development and advocacy organizations. We are 75 U.S. institutions and more than 750 faith groups working across the United States and around the globe. We address the structural causes of poverty and inequality in our communities and countries around the world.
(202) 783-3566LATEST NEWS
Amid Fears That World War III Has Already Begun, Russia Strikes Ukraine With New Missile
“I really believe the situation is very dangerous,” said one Russian politics expert during a week in which the two countries exchanged strikes.
Nov 22, 2024
Voices on both sides of the war between Russia and Ukraine have issued ominous statements during a week when the two countries traded escalatory missile strikes.
Russia launched a strike on the Ukrainian city of Dnipro using an experimental, hypersonic missile Thursday, according to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The attack followed Ukrainian strikes on Russian territory using western-made, long-range missiles.
"This is an escalation," said Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center toldThe New York Times. "I really believe the situation is very dangerous."
Moscow's missile was fired using a conventional warhead but "it could be refitted to certainly carry ... different types of conventional or nuclear warheads," Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh said. Singh also described it as an "intermediate range ballistic missile."
Initial reports from Ukrainian officials said that the strike was an intercontinental ballistic missile, in contrast to Putin's characterization of the missile. According to the Financial Times, officials from Ukraine, Russia, NATO, and the U.S. have offered different exact classifications for the weapon.
Putin, in a televised address, made clear that the move was in response to Ukraine's use of western-made weapons to strike deeper into Russia.
The Ukrainian government had long sought the permission of western governments to use weapons like American-made Army Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMS, and U.K.-produced Storm Shadow missiles. The U.S. began supplying the Lockheed Martin-produced ATACMS earlier this year, according to Defense One, but imposed restrictions on their use due to the escalatory implications of Ukraine using them to strike targets far inside Russian territory.
Ukraine launched strikes using both of those weapons this week following a policy shift from the Biden administration allowing their use, which at least one foreign policy expert cautioned was a "needlessly escalatory step."
"From that moment, as we have repeatedly underscored, a regional conflict in Ukraine previously provoked by the West has acquired elements of a global character," Putin said in his address, according to Reuters.
The comments come days after Putin also codified a change to the country's nuclear doctrine that lowered the threshold for potential nuclear weapons use.
Meanwhile, on the Ukrainian side, the country's former military commander Valery Zaluzhny offered a bleak prognosis of the war earlier this week, saying that he "believe[s] that in 2024 we can absolutely believe that the Third World War has begun."
The comments were in reference to the fact that Russia is enlisting the help of outside allies, such as North Korea, in its military effort.
Elsewhere, foreign policy experts cautioned against escalatory spiral.
Anatol Lieven, the director of the Eurasia Program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, offered an argument against what he sees as the underlying rationale of allowing Ukraine to attack Russia with U.S. and U.K.-supplied long range missiles.
"The official argument for the ATACMS and Storms Shadows decision is to put Ukraine in a stronger position before peace talks are initiated by Trump," he wrote in a piece published Thursday. "This is a dangerous gamble, because the missiles (which are guided to their targets by U.S. personnel) risk infuriating Russia without giving really critical help to Ukraine."
U.S. intelligence analysts have also warned that granting Ukraine the ability to use U.S., French and U.K.-supplied long-range missiles could prompt forceful retaliation by Russia; additionally, analysts cautioned that the missiles would likely not fundamentally change the course of the war.
In a similar vein to Lieven, Matt Duss, the executive vice president of the Center for International Policy and Robert Farley, an assistant professor at the University of Kentucky, argued in the pages of Foreign Policy this week that U.S. policymakers should pursue a negotiated peace for Ukraine, in part because "Ukraine does not have a path to a straightforward victory."
"If Trump makes good on his promise to end the war, supporters of Ukraine must be clear about the principles at stake and be careful not to let maximalist aims foreclose a durable negotiated settlement. We say this with the knowledge of what conceding Ukrainian territory to permanent Russian control could mean, and has already meant, for Ukrainians in those territories," they wrote.
Keep ReadingShow Less
UN Program's 2025 Outlook Warns 343 Million Acutely Food Insecure
"Global humanitarian needs are rising, fueled by devastating conflicts, more frequent climate disasters, and extensive economic turmoil," said WFP executive director Cindy McCain. "Yet funding is failing to keep pace."
Nov 22, 2024
The World Food Program offered a stark warning for the coming year Friday in its assessment of the escalating global hunger crisis: Due to climate catastrophe and violent conflicts around the world, without adequate funding, "2025 will be a year of unrelenting crises" that drive more people into food insecurity and starvation.
In the WFP 2025 Global Outlook, the agency emphasized that protecting more than 100 million people from devastating hunger in the coming year would require a relatively small investment—$16.9 billion, "roughly what the world spends on coffee in just two weeks."
That amount is a fraction of what the world's wealthiest countries—particularly the United States—put toward military spending in a year.
In total, the WFP found that 343 million people in 74 countries are acutely food insecure—a 10% increase from last year.
"Global humanitarian needs are rising, fueled by devastating conflicts, more frequent climate disasters, and extensive economic turmoil. Yet funding is failing to keep pace," said Cindy McCain, WFP executive director.
With $16.9 billion, the WFP said it could assist 123 million people who are most vulnerable to extreme hunger.
Among those are 1.9 million people who "are on the brink of famine," including those in Gaza, where access to food has been decimated in the last 13 months by Israel's near-total humanitarian aid blockade, repeated forced displacements, and U.S.-backed bombardment of the enclave. Many people in Gaza are now eating just one meal per day, and the United Nations this week warned of a "stark increase" in the number of households facing severe hunger in the southern and central parts of the territory.
More than 90% of people in Gaza are now "acutely food insecure," with 16% living in "catastrophic conditions," according to the United Nations.
"We urgently need financial and diplomatic support from the international community: to reverse the rising tide of global needs, and help vulnerable communities build long-term resilience against food insecurity."
People in Haiti and the sub-Saharan African countries of Mali, Sudan, and South Sudan were also identified as being most at risk for extreme hunger, with the region called "ground zero" for the humanitarian crisis.
Over 170 million people in sub-Saharan Africa are "acutely" food insecure, said the WFP. The region "accounts for 50% of WFP's projected funding needs in 2025," driven by climate extremes as well as violent conflicts in Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and the Sahel region.
The U.N. Famine Review Committee in August declared that famine had taken hold in a camp where hundreds of thousands of people live in North Darfur, Sudan, after being forcibly displaced by the civil war there.
The U.N. also reported on Thursday that 25.6 million people in the DRC—or 1 in 4—now suffer from "crisis or worse" levels of hunger, driven partially by fighting between armed groups.
"In such a fragile context, the cost of inaction is truly unthinkable," said Peter Musoko, WFP country director and representative for DRC. "Together, we need to work with the government and the humanitarian community to increase resources for this neglected crisis."
Across Asia and the Pacific, WFP said the hunger crisis facing 88 million people is caused largely by "increasingly frequent climate disasters."
In Afghanistan, approximately 12.4 million people faced acute food insecurity last month, linked to the "devastation caused by heavy rainfall and flooding."
The severe impact of Typhoon Yagi in Myanmar led to "even more displacement" and food insecurity, compounding the effects of an escalating civil war, and nearly 6 million people in eastern Bangladesh were also affected by severe flooding this year.
"At WFP, we are dedicated to achieving a world without hunger," said McCain. "But to get there, we urgently need financial and diplomatic support from the international community: to reverse the rising tide of global needs, and help vulnerable communities build long-term resilience against food insecurity."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Critics Call COP29 Climate Finance Draft 'Slap in the Face' by Rich Nations
"This is a shameful failure of leadership," said one Oxfam campaigner. "There is only one option for those grappling with the harshest impacts of climate collapse: trillions, not billions, in public and grants-based finance."
Nov 22, 2024
With the United Nations' annual climate summit scheduled to end Friday in Baku, Azerbaijan, green groups denounced the latest draft finance deal, which would direct the Global North to provide just $250 billion per year to help developing countries with emission cuts and adaptation—far below the $1.3 trillion campaigners demanded.
Although the figure represented progress from Thursday, when there was a placeholder "X" for the new collective quantified goal (NCQG) on climate finance, Oil Change International global public finance manager Laurie van der Burg still stressed that "this text is an absolute embarrassment. It's the equivalent of governments handing the keys to the firetruck to the arsonists."
There is a broader goal to raise $1.3 trillion in annual climate finance, but that would include funding from private sources.
"The vague $1.3 trillion investment target is not to be relied on and the $250 billion goal is not debt-free. Previous suggestions to end fossil fuel handouts and make polluters pay have all been axed," Van der Burg noted. "This amounts to a cop-out for polluters and allows rich countries to dodge their responsibilities by relying on the private sector and even developing countries to cover the bill, creating a debt trap for countries most vulnerable to the climate crisis."
She was far from alone in calling out developed nations, which previously failed to deliver on a 2009 pledge of $100 billion annually for poorer countries impacted by the climate emergency by 2020.
"With a paltry climate finance offer of $250 billion annually, and a deadline to deliver as late as 2035, richer nations including E.U. countries and the United States are dangerously close to betraying the Paris agreement," Rachel Cleetus, policy director of the Union of Concerned Scientists' Climate and Energy Program, said from Baku.
Parties to the 2015 Paris agreement hope to keep global temperature rise this century "well below" 2°C, relative to preindustrial levels, with a target of 1.5°C. However, a U.N. analysis revealed last month that the world is currently on track for 2.6-3.1°C of warming by 2100.
"The central demand coming into COP29 was for a strong, science-aligned climate finance commitment, which this appalling text utterly fails to provide" Cleetus highlighted. "Wealthier nations seem content to shamefully renege on their responsibility and cave in to fossil fuel interests while unjustly foisting the costs of deadly climate extremes on countries that have contributed the least to the climate crisis."
Jess Beagley, policy lead at the Global Climate and Health Alliance, a consortium of over 200 health professional and civil society groups, warned that "if COP29 agrees on the text shown to us today, it would sign a death sentence for millions."
The alliance's executive director, Jeni Miller, pointed out that "many of the countries most impacted by climate change are already paying more to service their international loans than the combined budgets for their health systems and education, with devastating impacts on people's health and well-being."
"It is unconscionable that wealthy countries are proposing a climate finance deal that could worsen the debt burden of countries facing the brunt of a climate crisis they did not cause," Miller asserted. "As people around the world experience firsthand the devastating impacts of heat, storms, floods, and droughts, the failure of developed countries to step up to their responsibilities is completely unacceptable, not to mention profoundly shortsighted."
Oxfam International's climate justice lead, Safa' Al Jayoussi, took aim at the summit's host, saying: "This is a shameful failure of leadership. The COP29 Presidency's top-down 'take-it-or-leave-it' approach has sidelined progressive voices. All while rich countries boycott climate justice by refusing to pay up and putting only false solutions on the table."
"No deal would be better than a bad deal, but let's be clear—there is only one option for those grappling with the harshest impacts of climate collapse: trillions, not billions, in public and grants-based finance," Al Jayoussi added.
Power Shift Africa director Mohamed Adow said that "our expectations were low, but this is a slap in the face. No developing country will fall for this. What trick is the presidency trying to pull? They've already disappointed everyone, but they have now angered and offended the developing world."
"The figure of $250 billion is about 20% of what developing countries have asked for. Are we really settling for a fifth of the ambition needed to tackle the climate crisis?" he continued. "It seems that building an ambitious climate finance outcome in Baku is not the ballgame this presidency is playing."
The U.N. climate summits often run into overtime, but there are concerns that COP29 talks could collapse entirely, given that there must be unanimous support for final deals. There are also fears that rich countries may fail to deliver on any pledge—again—especially with the return of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who ditched the Paris agreement during his first term.
"The Global North must stop playing poker with people's lives and pay their overdue debt," declared Namrata Chowdhary, chief of public engagement at 350.org, one of the groups calling for an overhaul of the COP process. "We need real leadership—from wealthy nations and the presidency—to land this deal. If they can't deliver, they must step aside, because we will not accept a bad deal that fails to meet the moment."
"As the world watches what should be the final day of this year's climate talks, the agreement we came here for remains elusive. This new climate finance goal is three years in the making, and the global majority remains leaps and bounds ahead of the governments who are continuing to stall and let progress slip away in the name of profits," Chowdhary concluded. "But we will not be silenced. At COP29, we hold the line in our demand for more climate finance, not this bare minimum offer."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular