Drop the Debt is the slogan of the late 1990s campaign for international debt cancellation led by the organisation

Jubilee 2000 Jubilee 2000 was an international coalition movement in over 40 countries that called for cancellation of third world debt by the year 2000. This movement coincided with the Great Jubilee, the celebration of the year 2000 in the Catholic Churc ...

. The phrase was coined by filmmaker Mike Christie. He and Jubilee 2000's Jamie Drummond set out to create a mainstream campaign to engage major figures within entertainment and music industries including Bono of rock band U2, and in turn the wider public. The slogan ''Drop The Debt'' garnered global recognition, and due to its success, is often assumed to be name of Jubilee 2000. Among the supporters were

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, Muhammad Ali, Bob Geldof,

Youssou N'dour Youssou N'Dour (, wo, Yuusu Nduur; also known as Youssou Madjiguène Ndour; born 1 October 1959) is a Senegalese singer, songwriter, musician, composer, occasional actor, businessman, and politician. In 2004, ''Rolling Stone'' magazine describe ...

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, N.T. Wright, and others. The slogan was subsequently used as the name for the short-lived British

NGO A non-governmental organization (NGO) or non-governmental organisation (see spelling differences) is an organization that generally is formed independent from government. They are typically nonprofit entities, and many of them are active in h ...

formed after the dissolution of

. Drop the Debt existed to work in the run-up to the G8 Summit in

Genoa Genoa ( ; it, Genova ; lij, Zêna ). is the capital of the Italian region of Liguria and the sixth-largest city in Italy. In 2015, 594,733 people lived within the city's administrative limits. As of the 2011 Italian census, the Province of ...

, Italy, and ensure that

debt relief Debt relief or debt cancellation is the partial or total forgiveness of debt, or the slowing or stopping of debt growth, owed by individuals, corporations, or nations. From antiquity through the 19th century, it refers to domestic debts, in particu ...

was on the agenda at that meeting. Founding staff included Jamie Drummond and Lucy Matthew who went on to form

DATA In the pursuit of knowledge, data (; ) is a collection of discrete Value_(semiotics), values that convey information, describing quantity, qualitative property, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of sy ...

with the support of Bono, Bobby Shriver and other high-profile figures. Jamie Drummond and Bono subsequently co-founded One.org.

References

Development charities based in the United Kingdom Third World debt cancellation activism {{postcolonialism-stub