Columbia International Affairs Online: Working Papers

CIAO DATE: 11/2010

The Arc of the Jubilee

David Roodman

October 2010

Center for Global Development

Abstract

The Jubilee 2000 movement, which called for the cancellation of the foreign debts of the poorest nations, reached its zenith in the late 1990s and 2000-and then, by design, shut down. In the space of a few years, it became one of the most successful international, nongovernmental movements in history. As part of a larger, ongoing project to understand the consequences and lessons of the episode, David Roodman provides thumbnail assessments of Jubilee 2000 from several perspectives, deemphasizing anecdotes and statistics in favor of major themes.