Jubilee USA Urges Leaders to Move Ebola Relief
Thailand is 3rd International Host in a Row to Deal with Natural Disasters During Global Meetings
Bangkok, Thailand – Ministers and world, business and development leaders begin major international meetings amidst growing concerns of high country debts, soaring food and fuel prices, and artificial intelligence challenges. More than 18,000 people from 191 countries will attend the Thailand meetings.
"The IMF is raising serious concerns on the state of a global economy that appears to be getting worse," noted Eric LeCompte, Executive Director of the religious development group Jubilee USA Network and a UN finance expert who monitored the meetings since 2010. "Our meetings are dominated by threats from high country debt levels, artificial intelligence and rising food and fuel prices."
Ahead of the meetings, a campaign urging the IMF to stop Ebola and bolster healthcare in the affected country of the Democratic Republic of Congo was launched by Jubilee USA Network. The bipartisan religious coalition, representing more than 700 global faith institutions, development groups and labor unions, calls for the IMF to provide at least $205 million in debt relief and aid for the DRC.
“The current Ebola crisis took at least 4200 lives and if we fail to contain Ebola, we face another major threat to the global economy,” said LeCompte, whose organization successfully worked with the IMF to address the 2013 Ebola epidemic and the 2020 COVID pandemic. "This is low-hanging fruit as the IMF already holds the tools to address this Ebola disaster."
The DRC makes $205 million in debt payments to the IMF over the next 12 months and Jubilee USA notes those debt payments can be canceled by the Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust (CCRT), used during the 2013 Ebola outbreak in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. That tool was used again to provide debt relief for 28 of the world’s poorest countries during the COVID pandemic. Other IMF vehicles to address Ebola include the IMF Resilience and Sustainability Facility that offers concessional loans. Jubilee also asserts the CCRT could do even more than cancel debt payments.
"The great secret of the CCRT is that not only can it cancel debt, it was used to provide grant-like aid in 2013 when the IMF provided financing and then the CCRT was used to cancel that new debt,” shared LeCompte.
While the development group is concerned with the dire threat of Ebola, it also raises concerns about growing natural disasters like the floods impacting Thailand.
"Every World Bank and IMF Annual meeting held outside of the United States since 2018 has been plagued by natural disasters during the meetings," stated LeCompte who attended every international annual meeting of the institutions impacted by natural disasters since 2018. " You can see the harm the floods are causing in Bangkok and outside of the city still impacting more than 3 million people. As natural disasters increase, the international community will need to provide more tools for relief and aid."
More than 21 Thailand provinces continue to be impacted by ongoing flooding. The 2018 meetings in Indonesia saw flooding and typhoons as the country's early warning system stopped operating. In 2023 in Marrakesh, Morocco, deadly earthquakes hit the site of the meetings weeks before world leaders arrived.
Read Jubilee USA's press release on IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva's curtain-raiser speech here.
Read Jubilee USA Petition for IMF Support to Fight Ebola here.