US$110 billion has been committed in debt relief for the world’s poorest people. That means that lives are being saved that would have been lost, and chances given that would never have been possible without the campaign.

The debt initiative for heavily indebted poor countries, or HIPC (see http://www.worldbank.org/hipc), imperfect though it is, is the first debt relief plan that has taken any account of human welfare and development goals, rather than simple ability to pay.

Debt is a live issue. It’s happening right now. World leaders know we’re watching, they are listening to what we are saying and they are becoming aware that that they will be held to account for the poverty debt is causing.

The UK government is onside. It also has considerable influence – most notably with the G8 and through its seats on the board of the World Bank and the IMF. Gordon Brown is a leading advocate of debt relief and has taken the UK further than many other governments to give effective help.

This is a long-term problem and we are working on long-term solutions. We’d love to wipe out unfair debt tomorrow, and we’re trying our hardest to end it NOW. But if it takes ten years, or twenty, so be it: we’re not stopping until it’s sorted.

Will debt relief ever work? Are countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo (3.5 million killed during years of war) or Malawi (teetering on the verge of famine) ever really going to make it? Debt relief works. Everybody knows it. In the 1940s, the German people were on their knees after Hitler’s costly and ultimately disastrous war effort. Then, in 1953, the country had two-thirds of its debts written off. And the US, politically desperate to see the new Iraq succeed, is proposing to cancel almost all of Iraq’s massive US$120 billion debt. When it really matters, everybody knows that no country can succeed while it is drowning in debt.

There are more people living in poverty now than ten years ago. More than 11 million children will die from preventable diseases this year – that’s 31,000 every day -, while 250 million children will not get an education. We sometimes think we have it tough here in th eUK, and maybe some of us do; but compared with these people, we don’t know we’re born. We owe these people a chance. We will cancel debt, or continue watching them die.