Stop the US-Colombia FTA Vote

Take Action February 18-22 to

Stop the U.S.-Colombia FTA Vote

 

President Bush is threatening to bypass law-making procedures to force a vote on the Free Trade Agreement without approval from Congressional leadership — once again disrupting the checks and balances of our system

 

Call your members of Congress while they are home for Presidents' Day recess and ask them to oppose this move by taking a public position against the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement.   

 

Our collective energy has stopped the FTA for a year. This is a victory that could be dashed by the powerful all-out campaign launched by the Administrations of U.S. President George Bush and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe. With six official U.S. Congressional delegations already sent to Colombia to experience carefully staged tours highlighting the efforts supposedly undertaken to end the systematic assassination of Colombia labor leaders, five more are scheduled. 

 

These delegations are clearly not seeing:

 

-  the 3.8 million displaced people forced from their homes, a disproportionate number are Afro-Colombian and Indigenous people;

 

-  families of union organizers, rather than labor leaders themselves, murdered so not to count in the closely watched assassination statistics;

 

-  purportedly demobilized paramilitaries resurfacing with new names and intimidating those in the act of defending human rights; and

 

-  increased extrajudicial executions of civilians by members of the Colombian armed forces.

 

Approving a FTA in a country engaged in a five decade conflict will perpetuate these abuses and exacerbate the humanitarian crisis lived out every day.  Neither we nor the people of Colombia can afford a NAFTA-style trade agreement that will cause more displacement and suffering.

 

Movements are arising all over the world and calling for international trade and investment systems that respect and promote the dignity of the human person, ensure the development and well-being of people in all nations, foster gender and racial equity and lead to environmental sustainability.  However, the U.S.-Colombia FTA takes us far away from this goal. 

 

A few calls can sway your members of Congress to take a public stand.  It's easy.  Here's how.

 

1. Call (202) 224-3121 and ask the Capitol Switchboard operator to connect you to your member of Congress' office.  Visit www.congress.org to find out who represents you in Congress

 

2. Talking points

- Please stop President Bush from forcing a vote on the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement by taking a public stance against it.

- Select from one of the talking points below to support your argument.

 

3. Call 1-202-224-3121 again and ask for one of your two senators.  Repeat the message, then call your other senator.

 

U.S.-Colombia FTA talking points

 

If Passed the U.S.-Colombia FTA will:

 

Undermine human rights and fuel the fires of conflict. Colombia is still a country at war. Its record on human rights is dismal. Attacks on civil society, union leaders, Afro-Colombians and Indigenous people continue with impunity. The FTA will deepen the economic disparity, which is a root cause of the conflict, and diminish human rights.

 

Destroy small farmers. The agreement will favor only a small sector of Colombian farmers who export to the U.S. The Colombian Ministry of Agriculture estimates that if tariffs on agricultural imports from the U.S. were eliminated, overall income for farmers would drop by more than fifty percent. This would wipe out local farmers—as happened to the 1.3 million who have been displaced in Mexico since NAFTA passed 12 years ago. This will only add to Colombia's 3.8 million internally displaced people. 

 

Increase drug trafficking. Colombia is already the world's largest producer of cocaine. The FTA will threaten livelihoods and displace small farmers leaving, for some, no other alternative than to join the lucrative drug trade.

 

Harm Indigenous peoples and Afro-Colombians. The internal conflict has disproportionately displaced Afro-Colombian and Indigenous peoples from their resource-rich, ancestral territories, ignoring their constitutional and legal rights. Laws put in place in anticipation of the FTA to attract investment dismantle the legal rights related to territory, mineral and forest resources of these communities. Once the FTA is in place, under its investment rules, multinational corporations benefiting from these legal reforms will be able to sue the Colombian government for compensation for future lost profits if the laws are revoked.

 

Hinder access to life-saving medicines. While the amended text of the Colombia FTA removes the most egregious, CAFTA-based, provisions limiting the access to affordable medicines, it still includes NAFTA provisions that undermine the right to affordable medicines. This will further exacerbate a failed Colombian health system that only covers ten percent of Afro-Colombians.

 

Harm workers and environment. The nominal changes made to the labor and environment provisions are insufficient. The Colombia FTA allows FTA dispute settlement panels to interpret and apply the terms of the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work differently than the Declaration has been interpreted and applied by the ILO itself. Enforcement of the new changes will be dependent on Colombian President Uribe who has a consistent record of undermining domestic labor and environmental law enforcement. Colombia is the most dangerous country in the world for union and labor organizers.

 

Increase the burden on women, children, and the poor. Provisions promoting the privatization and deregulation of essential services such as water, healthcare and education are written into this trade agreement. As these services become less accessible, women and the poor suffer the consequences of increases in prices of these services.

 

Undermine U.S. and Colombian sovereignty. The Colombia FTA contains a NAFTA-style foreign investor chapter that allows corporations to sue governments that pass environmental and public health laws that might reduce corporate profits.

 

Threaten the Amazon and wildlife. The FTA will stimulate an increase in logging and other extraction projects in the Colombian Amazon rain forest that mostly reside in Afro-Colombian and Indigenous territories. This will further endanger the lungs of the globe and precious species and will be reinforced by investor rules that allow corporations to sue the Colombian government when enforcement of environmental laws results in lost corporate profits.

 

Pirate traditional knowledge. The FTA will pave the way for large pharmaceutical and agribusiness corporations to patent traditional knowledge, seeds, and life forms. This opens the door to bio-piracy of the Andean-Amazon region and threatens the ecological, medicinal and cultural heritage of Afro-Colombians and Indigenous peoples.