Five years after the centre of Birmingham was brought to a halt by the first mass protest against third world debt, only eight of the world's most impoverished countries have seen a "significant" cut in their payments to western creditors...

Five years after the centre of Birmingham was brought to a halt by the first mass protest against third world debt, only eight of the world's most impoverished countries have seen a "significant" cut in their payments to western creditors, a report says today.

Only a third of the $100bn (£61.7bn) write-off promised by the eight leading industrialised nations has been delivered, according to the study marking the fifth anniversary of the global movement launched by Jubilee 2000.

"The majority of the world's poorest and most indebted people remain enslaved by debt, with no real hope under existing policies of being freed from indebtedness," the joint study by Jubilee Research, Cafod and the Jubilee debt campaign says.

More than 70,000 protesters ringed the summit meeting of G8 leaders in Birmingham in May 1998. Surprised by the strength of public feeling over debt, the G8 overhauled its heavily indebted poor countries (HIPC) initiative programme the following year.

The campaigners argue that the G8 has failed to deliver the sustainable exit from debt they promised poor countries. A World Bank study shows that 19 of the 26 countries targeted for help still have debts of more than one-and-a-half times their national income.

Countries have continued to stack up debts because falling commodity prices have cut into export earnings. Between 1998 and 2002, the 26 HIPC countries received a $29bn debt write-off and borrowed a further $24.2bn.

The study says the problem is not that debt relief does not work but that the west has failed to back it with sufficient resources. Countries whose debt service payments have been reduced markedly have spent the money on social infrastructure, rather than - as some sceptics feared - arms or unproductive projects.

Mozambique has used the savings to introduce free immunisation for children, while school fees have been abolished in Uganda, Malawi, Zambia and Tanzania.

But the insistence by the International Monetary Fund that countries must privatise state industries to qualify for relief is holding up progress, the cam paigners warn. Guyana, one of the first to reach the initial HIPC qualifying stage, has yet to receive a full write-off because it has refused to privatise the national sugar company.

The campaigners want a three-pronged attack on the existing system. First, they want relief to be based on the UN's human development targets, rather than on narrow financial criteria set by the IMF and the World Bank. Second, they want an end to "discredited and harmful macroeconomic conditionalities" imposed on poor countries. Finally, they are seeking a world bankruptcy tribunal to give countries the same protection against creditors that companies enjoy.