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Bodo Ellmers

04 Jun 2014 18:07:45

Representatives of the Global Jubilee Debt Relief Coalition visited the Vatican in Rome last month to discuss what to do about the global debt crisis. High and surging debt levels are causing economic and developmental problems once again. This time it’s a problem affecting every region of the world. The ethical dynamite of the ‘who owes whom and what and why’ is dividing humanity into creditors and debtors. A new Jubilee is long overdue. Breaking the chains of debt The Bible’s Old Testament describes a practice from the ancient world that could well be the world’s first insolvency regime. Every seven years, slaves and prisoners were to be freed, and debts were to be forgiven. This seventh year is called the Jubilee. Photo: The Jubilee delegation with Cardinal TurksonThe ...

Jeroen Kwakkenbos, Stephanie Colin

16 Jan 2014 14:29:50

The OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC) will meet in Paris later this month to discuss the ongoing process of re-examining the definition of – and reporting criteria for – aid. This review could not come soon enough as the EU, some of its largest member states and multilateral development banks, are increasingly reporting profit-making loans as aid due to outdated and ambiguous rules. Eurodad’s new report, A matter of high interest: Assessing how loans are reported as development aid finds a number of critical problems with the current reporting system. If the OECD DAC review does not bring an end to lax reporting criteria, aid could be artificially inflated by more than 50 billion euros in coming years. In an era when overall aid budgets are declining globally, ...