Dear Members of the U.S. Congress:
We are concerned Peruvian-Americans, immigrant
organizations and human rights advocates in the United
States. We are writing to express our strong
opposition for the Free Trade Agreement with Peru
(FTA) and to request its further renegotiation for the
following reasons:
LABOR RIGHTS
In August, Peru's President Alan Garcia agreed to
issue presidential decrees to clarify specific labor
laws during a congressional visit from U.S.
Representatives Rangel and Levin. Yet Peruvian labor
leaders argue that this is insufficient because it
does not change the labor laws through legislation and
will not guarantee effective enforcement. Like many
workers in Latin American countries, Peruvians face
constant threats to their labor rights. Violations
include discrimination against union organizers,
illegal firings, and forced overtime without pay.
Further, the new system of fixed-labor contracts and
subcontracting radically undermines workers' rights
because they do not guarantee a 44 hour work week or
labor standard. Nor will the presidential decrees
protect the rights of the majority of people,
seventy-five percent, who work in the informal sector.
And many of the remaining twenty-five percent, work
for private employment contracting agencies that are
not obligated to enforce labor rights.
A free trade agreement with Peru should not be
approved by the U.S. Congress until legislation is
passed by Peruvian Congress, which which guarantees
compliance with ILO standards and guarantees
enforcement.
AGRICULTURE, POVERTY & IMMIGRATION
Agriculture is an integral part of Peru's economy with
nearly a third of the population depending on this
sector for their livelihood. In the FTA, the U.S.
demanded that Peru renounce its rights under the WTO
agreements to apply Special Agricultural Safeguards,
designed to protect sensitive sectors. After a
thorough analysis of the trade text on agriculture,
the Peruvian National Convention on Agriculture
(CONVEAGRO) estimated that hundreds of thousands of
Peruvian farmers would be negatively affected by the
agreement. The U.S. agricultural subsidies
constitutes unfair competition for Peruvian
agricultural goods and will impoverish the 700,000
producers of cotton, corn, barley, wheat, oilseeds and
dairy products in that country. Considering that only
3% of Peruvian farmers export their products, it's
very likely that as hundreds of thousands of Peruvian
small farmers lose their markets, they will be pushed
into drug production, and to migrate with their
families to already impoverished Peruvian cities, or
as undocumented immigrants to countries like the U.S.
Even though Peru's economy has been growing
continuously in the last 7 years, almost 50% of the
population is still living under $2 per day as a
result of neo liberal economic policies that are very
similar to those promoted by this FTA. According to
the International Fund for Agricultural Development
(IFAD), close to one fourth of Peruvians live in
extreme poverty and rural population are the worst
affected, nearly 70 percent of them are extremely
poor. This FTA would affect negatively the economy of
the already impoverished rural populations, increasing
centralism and forcing human displacement.
After NAFTA, over 1.3 million small farmers lost their
livelihoods in Mexico due to agricultural rules that
are nearly identical to those included in the
U.S.-Peru FTA. As a result, undocumented immigration
from Mexico to the U.S. increased by 61 percent in the
years following the implementation of NAFTA, according
to Pew Hispanic Center. U.S. policies like
NAFTA-style "free trade agreements" influence the
economy of Latin America directly, therefore
undocumented immigration problem is a shared
responsibility which must be addressed by a
comprehensive immigration reform that includes fair
trade legislation that prevents interest groups from
promoting human trafficking, workers exploitation,
broken communities and cheap labor.
CORRUPTION & DEMOCRACY
We must remind you that there are pending cases of
human rights abuses and corruption involving Garcia's
first government. Garcia was reelected in 2006 on a
platform against Toledo's free trade policies and with
a promise to renegotiate the FTA – the agricultural
rules in particular. But, once elected, he instead
visited Bush to request its approval.
This FTA was passed by Peruvian Congress in 2006 in a
lame-duck session with very little public support and
ignoring a request for a national referendum. Eighty
percent of Peruvian Congress members who voted for
this FTA had already lost their seats in elections
that predated the vote.
Meanwhile foreign mining and natural gas corporations
are making huge profits in Peru but leave behind
underpaid workers, pollution and environmental
destruction. The Garcia administration has ignored
popular protests and strongly supports extractive
industries. The Garcia government has abandoned dozens
of towns destroyed by the recent earthquake, even
though it has the biggest surplus in history. Public
protests regarding this matter have been silenced or
ignored by the government, including closing down a
radio-TV station in the city of Pisco that had been
critical of the relief efforts.
We believe that if this FTA is ratified now by the
U.S. Congress, it will send a signal to the Garcia
government that its current heavy-handed and
anti-public interest policies are supported by the
U.S. Congress. It will further perpetuate the
perception that the U.S. favors multinational
interests over protecting human rights and reducing
corruption.
INDIGENOUS RIGHTS & THE ENVIRONMENT
According to the International Fund for Agricultural
Development (IFAD), the poorest of the poor in Peru
are the Indigenous peoples. About 73 percent of the
Indigenous communities live below the poverty line.
This FTA is a threat to indigenous peoples' heritage
and ways of living by allowing agribusiness and
pharmaceutical corporations to take over their
traditional medicine and nutrition knowledge for
profit.
Mining, oil and natural gas exploration and extraction
projects would increase dramatically with this FTA,
leading to extensive damage to the Peruvian
environment, especially the Andes mountains region and
the Amazon basin, which is the last virgin forest of
the planet. With this FTA, multinational corporations
would have the right to sue governments if any attempt
to protect the environment could cause to those
companies to see their profits reduced. In addition,
this deal establishes secret trade tribunals, making
trade rules more powerful than democratic institutions
and domestic laws.
As a result, entire Indigenous communities could be
displaced from their lands and pushed into
extermination. These FTA regulations directly
contradict the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous
Peoples recently adopted by the United Nations which
include the rights to protect their land and natural
resources.
PUBLIC HEALTH & INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
Hundreds of thousands of Peruvians will not be able to
afford generic medicines because of new patents and
data-protection regulations that are included in this
FTA, intended to protect pharmaceutical corporations.
Also, this FTA promotes the privatization and
deregulation of services such as water, health care
and education, and it protects the interests of
multinational corporations benefiting from Peru's
bungled privatization of its social security system –
at the expense of workers, women, children, senior
citizens and the chronically-ill.
CONCLUSION
We strongly encourage you to reject the Free Trade
Agreement with Peru – and ask instead for it's further
renegotiation – because it is not fair for most
Americans nor most Peruvians, and because it was
negotiated ignoring the voice of the people of the
both the United States and Peru.
We believe that a free trade agreement with Peru must
provide safeguards that will protect vulnerable
sectors of Peruvian society, instead of worsening its
economic, social and political inequality.
Trade should be used to promote social justice and
progress for all, not for the benefit of the few rich
and powerful. The United States can truly spread
democracy and freedom by example, not by imposing
economic policies that will increase corruption,
poverty and abuse among impoverished nations.
We believe that fair trade is necessary to address
poverty and hunger and to promote economic progress
and decent living standards, while respecting the UN
Declaration of Human Rights and guaranteeing the
protection of our planet.
Respectfully,
(Signatures follow)
We are concerned Peruvian-Americans, immigrant
organizations and human rights advocates in the United
States. We are writing to express our strong
opposition for the Free Trade Agreement with Peru
(FTA) and to request its further renegotiation for the
following reasons:
LABOR RIGHTS
In August, Peru's President Alan Garcia agreed to
issue presidential decrees to clarify specific labor
laws during a congressional visit from U.S.
Representatives Rangel and Levin. Yet Peruvian labor
leaders argue that this is insufficient because it
does not change the labor laws through legislation and
will not guarantee effective enforcement. Like many
workers in Latin American countries, Peruvians face
constant threats to their labor rights. Violations
include discrimination against union organizers,
illegal firings, and forced overtime without pay.
Further, the new system of fixed-labor contracts and
subcontracting radically undermines workers' rights
because they do not guarantee a 44 hour work week or
labor standard. Nor will the presidential decrees
protect the rights of the majority of people,
seventy-five percent, who work in the informal sector.
And many of the remaining twenty-five percent, work
for private employment contracting agencies that are
not obligated to enforce labor rights.
A free trade agreement with Peru should not be
approved by the U.S. Congress until legislation is
passed by Peruvian Congress, which which guarantees
compliance with ILO standards and guarantees
enforcement.
AGRICULTURE, POVERTY & IMMIGRATION
Agriculture is an integral part of Peru's economy with
nearly a third of the population depending on this
sector for their livelihood. In the FTA, the U.S.
demanded that Peru renounce its rights under the WTO
agreements to apply Special Agricultural Safeguards,
designed to protect sensitive sectors. After a
thorough analysis of the trade text on agriculture,
the Peruvian National Convention on Agriculture
(CONVEAGRO) estimated that hundreds of thousands of
Peruvian farmers would be negatively affected by the
agreement. The U.S. agricultural subsidies
constitutes unfair competition for Peruvian
agricultural goods and will impoverish the 700,000
producers of cotton, corn, barley, wheat, oilseeds and
dairy products in that country. Considering that only
3% of Peruvian farmers export their products, it's
very likely that as hundreds of thousands of Peruvian
small farmers lose their markets, they will be pushed
into drug production, and to migrate with their
families to already impoverished Peruvian cities, or
as undocumented immigrants to countries like the U.S.
Even though Peru's economy has been growing
continuously in the last 7 years, almost 50% of the
population is still living under $2 per day as a
result of neo liberal economic policies that are very
similar to those promoted by this FTA. According to
the International Fund for Agricultural Development
(IFAD), close to one fourth of Peruvians live in
extreme poverty and rural population are the worst
affected, nearly 70 percent of them are extremely
poor. This FTA would affect negatively the economy of
the already impoverished rural populations, increasing
centralism and forcing human displacement.
After NAFTA, over 1.3 million small farmers lost their
livelihoods in Mexico due to agricultural rules that
are nearly identical to those included in the
U.S.-Peru FTA. As a result, undocumented immigration
from Mexico to the U.S. increased by 61 percent in the
years following the implementation of NAFTA, according
to Pew Hispanic Center. U.S. policies like
NAFTA-style "free trade agreements" influence the
economy of Latin America directly, therefore
undocumented immigration problem is a shared
responsibility which must be addressed by a
comprehensive immigration reform that includes fair
trade legislation that prevents interest groups from
promoting human trafficking, workers exploitation,
broken communities and cheap labor.
CORRUPTION & DEMOCRACY
We must remind you that there are pending cases of
human rights abuses and corruption involving Garcia's
first government. Garcia was reelected in 2006 on a
platform against Toledo's free trade policies and with
a promise to renegotiate the FTA – the agricultural
rules in particular. But, once elected, he instead
visited Bush to request its approval.
This FTA was passed by Peruvian Congress in 2006 in a
lame-duck session with very little public support and
ignoring a request for a national referendum. Eighty
percent of Peruvian Congress members who voted for
this FTA had already lost their seats in elections
that predated the vote.
Meanwhile foreign mining and natural gas corporations
are making huge profits in Peru but leave behind
underpaid workers, pollution and environmental
destruction. The Garcia administration has ignored
popular protests and strongly supports extractive
industries. The Garcia government has abandoned dozens
of towns destroyed by the recent earthquake, even
though it has the biggest surplus in history. Public
protests regarding this matter have been silenced or
ignored by the government, including closing down a
radio-TV station in the city of Pisco that had been
critical of the relief efforts.
We believe that if this FTA is ratified now by the
U.S. Congress, it will send a signal to the Garcia
government that its current heavy-handed and
anti-public interest policies are supported by the
U.S. Congress. It will further perpetuate the
perception that the U.S. favors multinational
interests over protecting human rights and reducing
corruption.
INDIGENOUS RIGHTS & THE ENVIRONMENT
According to the International Fund for Agricultural
Development (IFAD), the poorest of the poor in Peru
are the Indigenous peoples. About 73 percent of the
Indigenous communities live below the poverty line.
This FTA is a threat to indigenous peoples' heritage
and ways of living by allowing agribusiness and
pharmaceutical corporations to take over their
traditional medicine and nutrition knowledge for
profit.
Mining, oil and natural gas exploration and extraction
projects would increase dramatically with this FTA,
leading to extensive damage to the Peruvian
environment, especially the Andes mountains region and
the Amazon basin, which is the last virgin forest of
the planet. With this FTA, multinational corporations
would have the right to sue governments if any attempt
to protect the environment could cause to those
companies to see their profits reduced. In addition,
this deal establishes secret trade tribunals, making
trade rules more powerful than democratic institutions
and domestic laws.
As a result, entire Indigenous communities could be
displaced from their lands and pushed into
extermination. These FTA regulations directly
contradict the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous
Peoples recently adopted by the United Nations which
include the rights to protect their land and natural
resources.
PUBLIC HEALTH & INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
Hundreds of thousands of Peruvians will not be able to
afford generic medicines because of new patents and
data-protection regulations that are included in this
FTA, intended to protect pharmaceutical corporations.
Also, this FTA promotes the privatization and
deregulation of services such as water, health care
and education, and it protects the interests of
multinational corporations benefiting from Peru's
bungled privatization of its social security system –
at the expense of workers, women, children, senior
citizens and the chronically-
CONCLUSION
We strongly encourage you to reject the Free Trade
Agreement with Peru – and ask instead for it's further
renegotiation – because it is not fair for most
Americans nor most Peruvians, and because it was
negotiated ignoring the voice of the people of the
both the United States and Peru.
We believe that a free trade agreement with Peru must
provide safeguards that will protect vulnerable
sectors of Peruvian society, instead of worsening its
economic, social and political inequality.
Trade should be used to promote social justice and
progress for all, not for the benefit of the few rich
and powerful. The United States can truly spread
democracy and freedom by example, not by imposing
economic policies that will increase corruption,
poverty and abuse among impoverished nations.
We believe that fair trade is necessary to address
poverty and hunger and to promote economic progress
and decent living standards, while respecting the UN
Declaration of Human Rights and guaranteeing the
protection of our planet.
Respectfully,
(Signatures follow)
No comments:
Post a Comment