Addressing continuing debt problems of poorest heavily-indebted countries

This strategy features in the framework of Agenda 21 as formulated at UNCED (Rio de Janeiro, 1992), now coordinated by the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development and implemented through national and local authorities.

In 1996, the international donor community agreed to launch a debt initiative designed to implement a strategy of burden-sharing among all creditors to reduce the debt of the heavily indebted poor countries (HIPCs) to a sustainable level, thus providing an exit from the rescheduling process. By 2000 four countries (Uganda, Bolivia, Guyana and Mozambique) have reached final completion. For the HIPCs, repeated reschedulings of bilateral debt in the past have not significantly reduced the amount of outstanding debt. Expansion of the HIPC programme, as proposed at the Cologne Summit in June 1999, and as endorsed by the international finance institutions at the end of September 1999, addresses the limitations of the previous initiative by providing deeper, faster and broader debt relief and broadening the scope of the initiative.