Waiving and drowning? Debt and the millennium declaration development goals

This paper relates the challenge of debt and the opportunities of debt reduction to the task of achieving the Millennium Declaration Development Goals, major new benchmarks for progress in development and reduction in poverty, inspired by a series of UN Conferences of the 1990s. It illustrates why questions of debt are important in terms of determining the capacity—or otherwise—of the international community to realize the MDGs. In particular, the paper uses primary education in the HIPC countries to illustrate these concerns. The paper also contains conclusions and recommendations about future debt relief efforts.