Please consider signing the ONE.org petition to the International Monetary Fund to freeze Pakistan’s national debt.
The country has been subject to a cataclysm, most likely made worse by Global Warming, which is most likely mostly caused by humankind’s fossil fuel burning, mostly caused by the actions of rich people in the West and North :-
https://www.one.org/international/actnow/pakistanfloods/index.html
“OVERVIEW : The sheer scale of the floods in Pakistan is staggering and the country will need all its available resources to help it recover from this crippling crisis and to fight long-term poverty. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) – the institution that oversees debt repayments – can play a key role in this. Ensuring all of Pakistan’s debt is frozen for 2 years would mean an extra $6 billion available to help those affected.”
This is how I signed :-
Dear Dominique Strauss-Kahn, IMF Managing Director,
Please help freeze Pakistan’s debt to ensure the country’s poorest people are able to recover from the devastating floods.
I believe it is an ethical and economic inevitability that, since global economic instability will continue, all debts to undeveloped nations will need to be permanently frozen or annulled.
The aid, development and emergency organisations are struggling to make their funds cover all the current needs and disasters, and the situation is being made worse by Climate Change, and will only deteriorate.
The poor are unable to pay back, and these debts therefore are becoming odious as well as untenable.
I think it would be appropriate to begin the process of recognition of this evolution by starting with Pakistan, whose people are suffering unimaginable catastrophe to their agricultural way of life, and are at high risk in the short-term of malaria, respiratory disease and water-related digestive system infections.
If you are in the United States of America, or Europe, you can afford to buy insurance against disaster. In Pakistan, you can’t, and anyway, in this case the disaster is so overwhelming, a normal risk-based financial product simply couldn’t restore the cropland, livestock, homes, public utilities and water sources for something like 20 million people.
Insurance is all about “all for one and one for all”. For Pakistan it’s too late, too impossible, for insurance.
Go on – show you’re an altruistic human and ask for Pakistan’s national debt to be frozen !
Let’s be one, and all for Pakistan.