FROM THE OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS

Thank you very much for this wonderful honor. And thank you for Oxfam's thoughtful analysis and skillful advocacy on the debt relief effort

Let me start by sharing an observation from eight years working on international economic issues at the treasury; namely, that while there are certainly lobbyists who come to Treasury who are better paid than the representatives of NGOs who come to talk to me about development issues, there is none that is better informed than they are. Oxfam, in this regard, is truly exemplary, and I am deeply honored to be receiving this award today.

In the eighteen months since that momentous G7 agreement in Cologne to expand HIPC debt relief, Oxfam and others have rightly been very focused on when we would actually deliver: on whether and when the HIPC countries themselves would see concrete results.

Today, I can give you one kind of encouraging answer to that question. By the end of this year, twenty-two countries will have reached their decision points to start receiving HIPC debt relief. In other words, around two-thirds of the countries eligible are likely to have benefited from the program in its first year, compared to only seven in three years under the original program. For these twenty-two countries, total debt service savings will average over $1 billion per year over the next five years.

However, we all know that the measure of the success of this initiative cannot simply be the speed at which relief is delivered, or even how much debt relief is provided -- but rather the difference it makes to the lives of the HIPC countries' poor.

That brings us to a rather different set of questions. Such as:

• Will the debt relief and the broader reforms that are to accompany relief stimulate growth, which is essential to poverty reduction?

• Will the new emphasis on civil society participation in decisions on how to use the relief foster greater accountability by governments to their people?

• And will the effort to ensure that debt savings are channeled to core social investments lead to a broader reallocation of budgets in that direction: particularly in favor of education, which Oxfam has rightly put front and center of the debate in its Education Now campaign.

It is still early days. But we can say that, in part because of Oxfam's efforts, a number of early qualifiers for HIPC relief -- including the countries that are represented here today -- have recognized the special importance of education, and are moving in the right direction to guarantee basic education as both human right and economic necessity.

The leaders of these countries understand that no nation has ever succeeded economically without major investments in education. They know what an Oxfam worker I met in Tanzania told me -- that HIV/AIDS awareness campaigns have little chance of success if their people cannot read. And they have seen the research showing that investments in female education are the highest return investment that a developing country can make. When girls are educated, they have more economic opportunities. They marry later and are able to take part in household decisions. They choose to have fewer children and are able to invest more in the health and development of each child.

Let me offer a few examples of how HIPC is helping to make a difference in education:

• Tanzania is going to save about $100 million a year in debt payments under HIPC, which will now be available for health and education. The government has announced, in response to priorities expressed by citizens during public consultations, that it will abolish primary school fees beginning in fiscal year 2001.

• Today, four out of ten children in Senegal do not go to school. As part of its debt relief package - amounting to about $800 million over time -- the government has committed to continue its effort to hire 2,000 new teachers each year. This will help to put Senegal on a path to meet a target of 70% enrollment within the next two years on the way to a goal of universal access to basic education by 2008.

• Benin has pledged to abolish school fees in rural areas for both boys and girls and compensate schools in rural areas for the loss of revenue from school fees. This should be key in closing the gender gap in rural areas, where only one in five girls completes primary education.

• Uganda used debt relief from the original HIPC program to fulfill it commitment to end school fees for grade school students. In less than two years, enrollment rates doubled.

• Better education is also the ultimate aim of debt relief in Honduras too, where the government had pledged to use debt relief to hire 1,000 teachers and extend compulsory schooling from six years to nine years.

While debt relief is essential in many countries, it is only one element in what must be a broader effort for the wealthiest nations to assist the poorest. Our challenge now is to build on the momentum of the extraordinary coalition that came together around debt relief, to help every country seize the opportunities that a broader and deeper global economic integration affords.

Most notably: just as countries cannot seize those opportunities without educated people, nor can they without healthy people. Malawi, for example, is losing 5,000 teachers a year to HIV/AIDS; many more than they can train in the same period. But recent successes in Vietnam, Senegal, Uganda, and Peru show that tuberculosis, malaria, and TB epidemics are not inevitable, and the spread of HIV/AIDS can be slowed.

How? First and foremost, it takes political commitment on the part of governments. But it also takes strong partnerships between these governments, NGOs, donor agencies, and private sector actors with special expertise to share. And when governments are committed, the US and other rich countries must meet them halfway through increased but better targeted development assistance. That is the essence of the Dakar Education for All platforms for action, which the United States wholeheartedly committed itself to last April.

That is really what HIPC is about, too. It is about bringing together creditor and debtor governments, multilateral institutions and civil society organizations to ensure that the totality of all of our development efforts have a genuine impact on lives of the very poor. And of course, that is what Oxfam has always been about. So, for this award, I thank you. And for all of your efforts worldwide, I salute you.