To: Latin America and Global Economic Justice Advocates
From: Theo Sitther, MCC Washington Office
Date: February 25, 2008

Issue:

Congress is under immense pressure to pass the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA). President Bush is threatening to bypass law-making procedures to force a vote on the FTA without approval from Congressional leadership.

Background:

Colombia is at a fragile stage, still engaged in an internal conflict that has ravaged the country for over four decades. All the armed groups in Colombia are responsible for gross human rights violations, including the Colombian government, guerillas and paramilitaries. Approving a free trade agreement during this time will perpetuate human rights abuses by these groups and exacerbate the humanitarian crisis of the over 3.8 million internally displaced people.

If passed the Colombia FTA will:

• Undermine human rights and fuel the 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 reward Colombian government and business elites for their misconduct while deepening economic disparity, a root cause of the conflict, and diminishing human rights.
• Destroy small farmers. The agreement will favor only a small sector of Colombian farmers who export to the U.S. If tariffs on agricultural imports from the U.S. are eliminated, income for most farmers will drop sharply. 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 provisions limiting access to affordable medicines, it still includes elements that undermine the right to affordable medicines. This will further exacerbate a Colombian health system that only covers ten percent of Afro-Colombians.
• Harm workers and environment. The nominal changes made to the labor and environmental provisions are insufficient. Enforcement of the new changes will depend on Colombian President Uribe, who has a consistent record of undermining domestic labor and environmental law enforcement. Colombia continues to be 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. If these services become less accessible, women and the poor will 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, mostly located in Afro-Colombian and Indigenous territories.
• 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.

Faith Reflection:

People of faith all over the world are calling for international trade and investment systems that respect and promote the dignity of the human person as created in the image of God, ensure the well-being and development of people in all nations as children of God, foster gender and racial equity before a God who loves and values each of us equally, and lead to environmental sustainability, for which we are charged as stewards of God's creation.

Action:

Contact your representative and your senators and urge them to oppose the U.S. – Colombia Free Trade Agreement. Members of Congress need to hear from constituents due to the immense pressure from the Bush administration to pass the trade deal.

View Sample Letter

Visits, e-mails, phone calls, faxes and letters are all good ways to contact your legislators. E-mails, phone calls and faxes are good for time-sensitive issues. Postal mail travels slowly in the Capitol, but letters have long-term impact. Be sure to include your mailing address in all correspondence to confirm your residency in a particular district and state.

Senator _____
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510
(202) 224-3121
www.senate.gov

Representative _____
House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515
(202) 224-3121
www.house.gov

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