Should all third world debt be cancelled Essay

Submitted By DoryGhanem
Words: 1011
Pages: 5

Essay
All Third World Debt Should Be Cancelled

The world is predominantly divided into First and Third world countries. The First world countries, also known as the Rich North or HICs, are countries which are more developed than said Third World countries. The Thirds world countries, also known as the Poor South or LICs, are the opposite; less developed. Some of these First World countries include: England, Saudi Arabia, the USA, or Malaysia. Third world countries include: Syria, Somalia, Ghana, or Brazil. These LICs are nearly always indebted. This means that they are in debt to other countries; this debt halters the development of the country and may even bring it backwards. Now, the citizens of the First World countries are pressurising their Governments to cancel out all the Third World debt, in order to stop their bridle in development and allow them to create and maintain a good life for their people. In this essay I will be discussing the reason why the countries should and should not cancel all this Third World debt.
One of the first reasons I believe all the Third World debt should be cancelled is due to the simple fact that these Third World citizens should not have to agonize due to the actions of their governments. These people live in constant fear of death and suffering attributable to the government’s wrong move. For example, in Ghana the government were gullible and allowed US companies to take advantage of something that was rightly theirs, the electricity provided by the Akasombo dam. They gave 76% of the electricity generated to Valco for dirt cheap whilst they could not provide for the people! This caused these citizens lives’ to be made 10 times harder and this electricity could have saved many lives if it had been put to good use, in a hospital, for instance. These loans prevent economic stability which not only affects the individual person but the country as a whole. Also some countries may start conflict by using the money to buy weapons which will again jeopardize the peoples’ lives.
The second reason why this demoralizing debt should be withdrawn is drawn to the fact that these countries will theoretically never be able to pay off the debt! Most of the indebted countries generally go into debt crisis. This term means that the country will take out a loan from another country in order to pay for the previous loan, this then turns into a vicious cycle. So, really it would actually be the sensible option to withdraw these debts and stop the country from being handicapped in its development then to keep carrying it on unnecessarily. The money could in fact be used more usefully to improve the quality and standard of living of the people.
Finally, the last reason to annul these debts is the fact that these countries can in fact provide us financially through ways that would also profit them. For example, through trade. They could also become consumers and make treaties with us thus contributing to the number of our allies. In addition if this debt was taken off they could use the money to search for natural resources. For example, the small country on the Mediterranean coast, Lebanon, had some of its debt removed. It used this money to search for oil on its coast which consequently it found thus helping it to develop.
Now I will begin listing the reasons why we should not remove all the Third World debt.
The first reason asserting why we should not withdraw these debts is due to the influence which the countries that give the loan have on the country. Most of these debts come with a condition, for example the World Bank normally enquires that if the money is lent the debtor country must follow the rules which it states. If the debts were cleared Western countries such as the USA or England will lose the countries which were under Western influence and possibly these