Our history of fighting corruption in the Third World

By Other News Sources on November 15, 2002 • ( Leave a comment )

Patricia Adams

November 15, 2002
Over the last decade, Probe International, Canada’s only organization dedicated to protecting the Third World’s environment, has made the elimination of corruption a major focus of its work.

Probe International has long recognized that western governments – which have a history of tolerating foreign corruption and even treating bribes as legitimate business expenses – are as culpable as the Third World regimes whose officials accept bribes.

1991	Probe International publishes Odious Debts: Loose lending, corruption, and the Third World’s environmental legacy. This book identifies corruption – a dominant source of odious debts – as the cause of unsustainable development projects and argues that, under international law, Third World citizens shouldn’t be responsible for repaying western banks, development agencies, and other lenders who funded corrupt projects.
1991	Patricia Adams’ book tours of South America, Asia and Europe, popularizes the Odious Debts concept and highlights the role of corruption in saddling Third World countries with unrepayable debts.
1993	Odious Debts is published in Spanish by an Argentinian publisher, and becomes available to the citizenry of Spanish-speaking Third World nations.
1998	After the collapse of South Africa’s apartheid regime, its Truth and Reconciliation Commission recognizes the odiousness of the apartheid debts inherited by the new government of Nelson Mandela. Desmond Tutu, the chair of the commission, later endorses the doctrine of Odious Debts.
1998	The Jubilee Movement – an organization backed by the world’s major churches that calls for Third World debt cancellation – adopts the Odious Debts doctrine.
1999	After the G7 meeting in Cologne attracts 35,000 demonstrators, the Third World anti-corruption movement asks Canada’s Probe International and South Africa’s odious debts campaigners to jointly launch a Web site that will act as a resource for Third World citizens groups. This site is now operating at http://www.odiousdebts.org.
2000	Probe International exposes the role of corruption in furthering China’s Three Gorges dam, the world’s largest and most ruinous development project.
2001	At the urging of reformers in Indonesia, Patricia Adams meets with the country’s president and his senior advisors in Jakarta over repudiating Indonesia’s odious debts.
2002	Odious Debts is translated into Bahasa Indonesia, making it available to that country’s 180 million citizens.
2002	Probe International and campaigners from the Philippines and Nigeria, representing Jubilee South, tour Germany to help its Jubilee movement develop its campaign against corruption and odious debts.