[Trade-Matters] Take Action February 18-22 to Stop the U.S.-Colombia FTA Vote

[Jessica Walker Beaumont]

Take Action February 18-22 to Stop the U.S.-Colombia FTA Vote

 

Visit www.tradeandwar.org/take-action.html to see a web version of this
action

 

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. Six official U.S. Congressional delegations have already
been sent to Colombia to experience carefully staged tours highlighting
the efforts supposedly undertaken to end the systematic assassination of
Colombia labor leaders and 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.

 

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, 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
<http://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 below talking points 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.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://list.afsc.org/pipermail/trade-matters/attachments/20080219/9af90a5f/attachment.htm 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 3334 bytes
Desc: image002.jpg
Url : http://list.afsc.org/pipermail/trade-matters/attachments/20080219/9af90a5f/attachment.jpeg 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: AFSC US-Colombia FTA Prez day alert.pdf
Type: application/octet-stream
Size: 35110 bytes
Desc: AFSC US-Colombia FTA Prez day alert.pdf
Url : http://list.afsc.org/pipermail/trade-matters/attachments/20080219/9af90a5f/attachment.obj