Contact: Paul Davis ACT UP Philadelphia: mobile 082 4382894

(12 July 2000, Durban) AIDS activists from ACT UP Philadelphia, ACT UP Paris, and ACT UP New York will join the South African organization Jubilee 2000 and conference delegates from the Durban International AIDS Conference and the Women of Durban Conference at a vocal protest at the US Government reception this evening at the Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza in Durban. The action is endorsed by both ACT UP and Jubilee 2000.

Activists will demand that the US use its considerable influence with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to pressure them to cancel the foreign debt of developing nations and end structural adjust-ment programs. The United States, the largest shareholder at both institutions, maintains veto power over major decisions at both the IMF and the Bank. Voting at the IMF and the Bank is weighted, with bigger con-tributing countries having proportionally more say. The IMF in particular is generally viewed as following a line set by the U.S. Treasury Department. The US is the biggest contributor to both organizations.

The US Ambassador to South Africa Delano E. Lewis; the U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher, Director of the White House Office of National AIDS Policy Sandra Thurman, will be attending the reception.

Many developing nations are saddled with enormous foreign debts equal to a large portion of their gross national product. Largely because of these debts, countries are unable to provide basic healthcare and other services to their citizens. For example, in Malawi, where about 1 in 6 adults is infected with HIV, 40% of public expenditure is directed to debt service. In Uganda, government spending per person on healthcare is US $2.50 per year, while US$15.00 per person is spent on debt servicing.

Structural adjustment programs are currently a precondition for loans from organizations like the IMF and World Bank. They force a country to restructure its economy in order to raise money to service the debt. The poor countries of sub-Saharan Africa, for example, owe more than $200 billion in foreign debt—three times more than they earn annually in exports. About 20 percent of sub-Saharan African countries’ export income (not counting South Africa) goes to service foreign debt. A huge part of their economies must be devoted to producing goods for export—with the resultant income sent back out of the economy and not available for domestic use.

Said ACT UP member Jose DeMarco, "As a result of structural adjustment programs, small farmers can lose their land if the government can find a more lucrative land use for it. Poverty increases dramatically." In the Ivory Coast, where one in ten adults is infected with HIV, structural adjustment has resulted in doubling the poverty rate, so that by 1995, 36.8% of Ivorians earned less than one US dollar per day, compared with 17.8% in the late 1980s.

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