Keele lecturer helped cancel $120 billion of Third World debt
Former Keele University politics lecturer Dr Martin Dent founded the Jubilee 2000 campaign, which helped secure the cancellation of $120 billion of Third World debt in 2000.
Former Keele University politics lecturer Dr Martin Dent was one of the founders of Jubilee 2000, an international coalition that campaigned for the cancellation of Third World debt by the year 2000.
The campaign contributed to the cancellation of approximately $120 billion of debt owed by more than 35 of the world’s poorest countries. Jubilee 2000 brought the issue of international debt relief to global attention, with its campaign subsequently discussed at the G8 summit.
The cancellation of debt is widely regarded as a significant milestone in the history of international development, and Dr Dent’s role as one of the campaign’s founders remains an important part of Keele’s history.
It was at Keele that the idea for the campaign was born when in 1990, a group of Dr Dent’s students walked to the front of their lecture theatre to sign a petition started by their politics lecturer to call for the cancellation of the crippling debt. By the turn of the century, more than 20 million people from 155 countries had added their names to the Jubilee 2000 petition and campaigners estimate that $120 billion of debt was eventually written off, freeing many developing countries from financial paralysis.
Dr Martin Dent (right) at the Human Chain Jubilee 2000 protest in 1998. Credit: Jubilee Debt Campaign
The cancellation of debts owed by developing countries enabled governments to reduce poverty levels and fund health and education programmes.
Dr Dent spent most of the 1990s promoting the aims of the Jubilee 2000 campaign, which inspired a mass movement and caught the attention of world leaders. Renowned economist Ann Pettifor worked on the campaign which was also supported by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who was a patron, Bono, Muhammad Ali, Bob Geldof, and Gordon Brown.
Dr Dent was awarded an OBE in 2000, and the next year he and his co-founder Bill Peters shared the International Peace Award of the Gandhi Foundation.
