They already have. Debt ridden countries have paid back several times the original sums they borrowed. What we're taking about now is interest and arrears that have made the debts unpayable. Mozambique, for instance, owes the UK government's Export Guarantee Programme more than £90 million in loans used to buy British goods worth just £41 million. Well over half of what Tanzania still owes the UK is interest and interest arrears.

Around US$355 billion (£213 billion) is owed by 52 of the world's poorest countries to some of the world's richest. Yearly repayments from these countries work out at around US$23.4 billion (£14 billion). Some of this money is owed to the IMF and World Bank which are controlled by the world's rich countries, such as the US. The rest of the debt is owed directly to individual governments such as ours.

The G8 countries promised to cut US$110 billion of debt, but the plans for debt relief are on hold. Only US$36.3 billion has been written off so far. Anyway people in the know - such as Jubilee 2000 - estimate that at least US$300 billion must be written off because it can never be paid without taking money away from vital work like immunising children against basic diseases and primary education.

There's real evidence that when debts are cancelled the cash released is getting through to ordinary people. For instance, Uganda, Malawi, Zambia and Tanzania have had some debts written off, and as a result have been able to scrap school fees that barred all but the richest children from school.

There are many reasons for this - but partly it's because creditors are holding out for other people to make the first move. This way they hope there will be more money available to pay the debts to them. Also it's because debtor countries have to meet conditions to qualify for debt relief. Many of these conditions are either too demanding, or, crucially, too political costly for governments to see through quickly. You try cancelling a food subsidy that a poor urban population relies on.

Christian Aid's latest estimate is US$300 billion. Much of this debt could be written-off using money already in the IMF and World Bank - and, according to Gordon Brown himself, by selling some of the gold held by these organisations. The cost could be spread across a number of years, and a number of countries. No one other than accountants would really notice the difference - we certainly wouldn't go short on health care or trips to the pub.
To put this in perspective, in the UK we spend around £12 billion on cigarettes a year. In the US they gamble over £350 billion a year. So it's all about priorities.
A better question to ask is how much would it cost not to write off the debt. However much it is, it won't be paid by the rich world's smokers and gamblers, but by the world's poorest people. People who won't get AIDS medication, who won't go to school, who won't have basic health care. People who will die unnecssarily and prematurely after living lives bereft of comfort, hope and happiness. Nice, eh?
So for the world's poorest countries, and the world's poorest people, it is very literally a matter of life - a life full of pain and fear - and death.
For us it is simply a matter of whether we feel like doing it.

This remains a tempting option for many of the poorest countries. The problem is that many are so poor and so dependant on help from outside that they are in an impossible position - they need any help they can get, even if it means accepting impossible debts.
Much of the present debt was also lent irresponsibly, without checks on how the money was to be used, or how it would be paid back. For example in 1979 the IMF's own economists warned against lending to Mobutu's Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), citing embezzlement, money laundering and a generally corrupt ruling elite. And the IMF? They made the loan anyway, opening the doors to massive international loans. Although they did not benefit, the people of the DRC (who typically live on 20 US cents a day) are still paying for them now.
In Bolivia, when the generals took over in 1971, the country had debts of 700 million. By 1982, when the military were kicked out, the debt had risen over 400 per cent to US$3.6 billion - most of the money having disappeared into the pockets of the ruling elite.

No. The cash freed up by debt relief should be closely watched. Countries should be able to show they have consulted widely, and attracted public support for their spending plans. This way ordinary people are most likely to see the benefits of debt relief, and won't get ripped off yet again.

This mad:
By the mid 1990s, a third of Bolivia's income was being used to pay interest on its debts.
In 1994, Nicaragua was scheduled to make repayments of US$1.46 billion. Its entire export earnings for that year were US$489 million.
In 1996, Mozambique spent twice as much on debt interest as on education, and four times as much on debt as it did on health. Half of the government's budget came from aid - but ten per cent of this went straight back to pay debt interest.

Trade and debt are part of the same giant, messy, lack of justice. On one hand the poorest countries face unpayable debts - and on the other hand their trade earnings from commodities are at a 150-year low. Yet bizarrely, unjust trade rules trap these poor nations into producing these same low value commodities - while forcing them to accept heavily subsidised products from Europe, Japan and the US. It really is that simple and that unfair.

Debt is not complicated. Debt is simple: it is making the poorest people poorer. The poor poorer? Yes, and we're not talking here about being stuck with an old TV that jumps a bit, or having your card eaten by the cash point because you accidentally went overdrawn. We're talking about working all day to earn the sort of money that wouldn't buy an ice cream, about an average life expectancy as low as 45.
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