[Announce-DAN] User fee editorial in The Daily Camera

[Leona Cohen <thelioness333@yahoo.com>]

Subject: User fee editorial in The Daily Camera 
Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2000 14:55:53 -0500 

Below is a fine editorial on user fees that was in
today's "Daily Camera" 
and that Mara had a say in getting published.  Thanks
to Clay Evans at the 
Camera for writing it.  Larry 



More user-friendly loans  Perversely, the World Bank
and the International 
Monetary Fund cling to policies that can devastate the
very poor who 
supposedly benefit from "development" loans.  When
poor countries accept 
loans and debt relief proposals, they often must
accept conditions known 
collectively as "structural adjustment" — a $10 word
for policies that 
encourage market reforms.  Unfortunately, some
conditions make it harder 
for 
the poorest citizens to take advantage of such
services as elementary 
education and basic health care, because they require
governments to impose 
"user fees" for such things. User fees, according to
the monetary 
institutions, are supposed to ease the financial
burden on national 
governments by having local communities pay a small
share.  On its face, 
that sounds reasonable. But in poor countries,
particularly those in 
sub-Saharan Africa, the economic margin is vapor-thin:
When people are 
asked 
to pay even a nominal fee for services, they simply
opt not to send their 
kids to school and go to the health clinic.  Young
girls in Zimbabwe have 
resorted to prostitution so they can afford to pay
school fees. In Ghana, 
65 
percent of rural children and 77 percent of kids in
the capital city were 
not attending school because of user fees. The
imposition of fees at a 
clinic that tests for sexually-transmitted diseases in
Kenya led to a 40 
percent decrease in attendance for men and 65 percent
for women.  But as 
Americans look forward to our traditional feast of
thanks we also can give 
thanks in this "Jubilee" year — an Old Testament
tradition that calls for 
debt forgiveness every 50 years — that grassroots
activists have convinced 
the U.S. government to exercise its considerable clout
to do away with 
onerous, self-defeating user fees.  In late October, a
bipartisan 
Congressional coalition — including everyone from U.S.
Rep. Mark Udall, a 
champion of the debt-relief cause, to conservative
Sen. Jesse Helms — 
passed 
a foreign aid spending bill that requires the U.S. to
oppose World Bank and 
IMF loans that include user fees for basic services to
the poor. President 
Clinton signed the bill, despite reservations from his
Treasury Department. 
This all but guarantees that user fees on the poor are
dead, given that the 
U.S. has veto power in the international financial
bodies.  This comes on 
top of more good news for poor nations: Congress
approved a $435 million 
debt-relief package, while the G8 countries, the IMF
and the World Bank all 
have committed to reducing by one-third the debt
burden of countries most 
in 
need.  Those who've never seen poverty in the
developing world may wonder 
why we should forgive debts at all, citing "national
responsibility." 
Here's 
why: It costs us very little per taxpayer to do so,
and the more burdened 
these countries are by debt, the more lives are lost,
as governments 
struggle to pay exorbitant interest instead of using
revenues for basic 
services. Without debt forgiveness, those avoidable
deaths fall — even if 
just a little — on our pocketbooks.  Remarkably, this
positive movement can 
be credited largely to citizen activists. At the
beginning of this year, 
debt relief wasn't even on the political radar. But
after hundreds of 
citizen rallies across the North America and Europe,
calls to action from 
religious leaders such as Pope John Paul II, a little
spark from 
celebrities 
like Irish singer Bono (who reportedly brought Helms
to tears) and lobbying 
by the Washington, D.C.-based group RESULTS, suddenly
everybody wanted to 
be 
a part of the jubilee.  Of course, there's still more
work to be done. 
Activist groups have decided to extend the spirit of
Jubilee 2000 into the 
coming years, in hopes of eliminating other ludicrous
planks of structural 
adjustment — IMF/World Bank-imposed water fees, for
example, have led to 
cholera outbreaks in South Africa — and erasing the
remaining two-thirds of 
the debt owed by the world's poorest countries. We're
confident that we'll 
continue to make progress.  The big lesson here is
that sometimes 
politicians do pay attention when people promote a
just cause. Cynics, take 
note.  November 22, 2000   Copyright 2000 The Daily
Camera. All rights 
reserved. 


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