March 30,2000,
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Nineteen churches and other faith-based organizations weighed in
with Congress today (March 30) with testimony urging funding for debt relief for
impoverished countries and for programs to assist sustainable development, refugees,
conflict resolution and reconciliation and multilateral peacekeeping. Their testimony opposes funding for “ineffective
and abusive anti-narcotics programs,” with specific reference to Colombia.
“Faith
Action for People-Centered Development Policy,” whose members include the National
Council of Churches and its humanitarian assistance ministry, Church World Service,
presented the testimony before the Appropriations Committee of the Foreign Operations
Subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Faith Action is an informal working group of
more than twenty Protestant communions, Roman Catholic groups, faith-based advocacy
coalitions, and religious private and voluntary organizations. The House Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign
Operations is the committee that provides the House of Representatives with
recommendations on foreign aid spending priorities.
The testimony is
available at www.ncccusa.org/publicwitness/fatestimony.html on the NCC’s Web site. Here are key points:
DEBT RELIEF:
Congress is asked to provide the funds and authority for cancellation of both bilateral
and multilateral debts owed by the highly indebted and impoverished countries that now
qualify for debt relief under U.S. law. Funding
debt relief “must not come at the cost of reducing funds available for other
development or lending programs.”
DEVELOPMENT
ASSISTANCE: “One need not believe that aid can do everything to see that foreign
assistance can do more. Despite our nation’s
great wealth, we rank last in the industrialized world in terms of the percentage of our
GDP which is directed to help those most in need. This
trend must be reversed, especially at a time of budget surplus.”
Emphasized are the need for increased
assistance to sub-Saharan Africa, “one of the poorest regions of the world,” to
which development assistance “continues to decrease disproportionately in comparison
to allocations for other regions of the world.”
Funding also is urged for HIV/AIDS response
around the world, especially in Africa; increased assistance to Latin America and the
Caribbean especially given the reconstruction needs following Hurricane Mitch and the
mudslides in Venezuela, and to the Middle East in ways that support implementation of the
peace process but “not used to increase military assistance to Israel.”
REFUGEES’ NEEDS: Refugee admissions to
the United States have declined more than 40 percent over the past eight years, and the
Administration has proposed further reductions.
The “Faith Action” testimony
advocates returning admissions to their historic levels of more than 100,000 a year,
citing the world’s 14 million refugees and more than 17 million internally displaced
persons – many of whom will never be able to return home. The testimony also asks Congress to restore
funding to meet refugees’ needs in Africa, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Latin
America and the Caribbean and in Europe.
CONFLICT RESOLUTION: Funding is asked for
programs that “contribute to conflict resolution and reconciliation and support
multilateral peacekeeping efforts at as high a level as possible.” The testimony urges President Clinton to sign the
Ottawa treaty, which calls on governments to ban the production, stockpiling, transfer and
use of landmines.
OPPOSED: INEFFECTIVE AND ABUSIVE
ANTI-NARCOTICS PROGRAMS: The “Faith Action” testimony opposes the $1.7 billion
proposed assistance for counternarcotics operations in the Andes, particularly the $500
million program “Push into Southern Colombia.”
Assistance for the Colombian Army to target
the coca growing regions of southern Colombia “will escalate the violence and
undercut efforts for a negotiated peace settlement to Colombia’s 40-year civil war,” and proposed aerial fumigation would
displace 10,000 more people from southern Colombia, “causing great human suffering
and incalculable environmental damage,” the testimony asserts. “We urge you instead to support much-needed
assistance for peace, human rights, justice reform, alternative development and
humanitarian assistance to Colombia’s internally displaced people.”
Increased U.S. military involvement in
Colombia is opposed, urging support instead for several measures to promote peace, human
rights and development in Colombia – and drug treatment and prevention programs to
reduce the demand for drugs in the United States.
-end-
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