poorest: can't pay, shouldn't pay Jeffrey Sachs, a special adviser to UN secretary general Kofi Annan, has publicly suggested that Africa's poorest countries should refuse to pay the billions of foreign debt that still hangs round their necks.
Speaking to African leaders and diplomats in Ethiopia in July, he argued that the rich nations should simply write off the outstanding debts.
But if not:
"I would suggest obstruction - you do it yourselves.
"The time has come to end this charade. The debts are. unaffordable.
"No civilised country should try to collect the debts of people that are dying of hunger and disease and poverty." The debt mountain The UN Conference on Trade and Development estimates that the combined foreign debts of the 34 poorest African countries was $106 billion in 2002. Life before death? Life expectancy in subSaharan Africa has fallen to 40 years or less as a result of the AIDS epidemic, other diseases, and poverty.
The latest UN Development Programme figures show Zambia with the lowest life expectance, of Just 32.7 years, followed by Zimbabwe (33.9), Swaziland (35.7), Lesotho (36.3), Malawi (37.9) and Mozambique (39.5).
Last year the UNDP prolected that at current rates it would take 140 years for Africa to halve the number of people in extreme poverty. Since then conditions have worsened. POLICE Landless campaigners confront police at Jonannesburg summit last year time in more than 5 decades we are seeing the beginnings of a radical mass movement in South Africa's countryside, where 45 per cent of the population live.
The LPM's participation in the Social Movement Indaba (SMI), joining its forces with the Anti-Privatization Forum (APF) and the Anti-Eviction Campaign (AEC) that are mobilizing in the townships, reflects the unity between rural and urban struggles.
It was at the WSSD in 2002