As Fast-Track Gathers Steam in Washington, Colombian Leaders Speak Out Against Three Years of Free Trade

By Julia Duranti, Witness for Peace Colombia

While the U.S. Senate gears up for a final vote following Tuesday’s temporary setback on  Fast-Track Trade Promotion Authority for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)—the U.S.’s largest and most secretive Free Trade deal to date—today  the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement turned three years old. All of its original critiques, particularly regarding labor and human rights concerns, continue to be relevant for Colombia and current TPP negotiations. The Witness for Peace Colombia team sat down with Colombian human rights defenders to get their thoughts on three years of Free Trade with the U.S., now Colombia’s largest trading partner. Their responses highlight the importance of continuing to oppose the TPP as a deal that’s bad for workers, communities and the environment in the U.S. and abroad. Fast-Track's fate will likely be determined in the House of Representatives. If you haven't already, click here to tell your Representatives to vote no on Fast-Track and oppose the TPP.

Gerardo Cajamarca, Union Leader with Sinaltrainal who has asylum in the U.S. due to paramilitary threats against his life:

“The effects of Free Trade and the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement were felt well before the final agreement was implemented. They weren’t agreements; they were impositions. And these impositions have made Free Trade a process of war, extermination and genocide against the working class. Over the last 20 years during which the Free Trade Agreement was being negotiated, 3,000 unionists in Colombia were murdered, and that this continues to happen daily in Colombia. But it’s not just unionists. Afro-Colombians, small-scale farmers and indigenous communities are also being assassinated and displaced. It’s said that Colombia has the second highest rate of displacement in the world, right? And why is that? It is the result of imposing Free Trade Agreements. We do not accept these agreements and we view them as illegitimate. “

These realities are even clearer in the city of Buenaventura, Colombia’s largest port and unofficial capital of its Pacific coast that has seen major changes due to plans to increase port capacity and infrastructure since Colombia has signed onto Free Trade Agreements with the U.S., Canada, the Pacific Alliance regional trading block, South Korea, and the European Union. Leaders discuss unfettered port expansion and related tourist development projects, accompanied by increasingly precarious labor conditions and displacement.

Jhon Jairo Castro Balanta, President of Buenaventura Portworkers Union:

“Labor rights have been impacted by a lack of follow-through from both sides: in this case the Colombian and the U.S. government, who only demanded that Colombia comply with certain measures because the U.S. wanted to ratify the Free Trade Agreement. But as soon as the FTA was approved pressure to comply with the Labor Action Plan has disappeared. We’ve seen exploitative subcontracting practices increase and there are no protections for us. In a triumph for noncompliance, we have a really weak Ministry of Labor, which didn’t hire the number of labor inspectors that it was supposed to hire in order to combat labor informality in a number of sectors, not just the ports.

Our situation is made worse by the proliferation of private port authorities. We have at least five now…there’s no control over this expansion, and we ask: How can they allow more ports to be built when they can’t even manage to protect basic labor rights of their workers? If they’re going to build more ports, let’s look first at working conditions. And it’s not only affected us as workers, but as a community. With this issue of port expansion they’re building warehouses everywhere and we think this is related to the “relocation” of people that live in waterfront neighborhoods. We don’t see any mechanisms that guarantee respect for us as workers or as a community.”

Danelly Bantu, a community organizer with Black Community Processes (PCN) in Buenaventura, echoed concerns regarding the social, cultural and community impacts of Free Trade on Buenaventura.

“The issue isn’t just labor rights; it’s also about our fundamental rights to identity, land, organizing and participating in our communities. Port expansion is the main cause of territorial displacement, and it’s carried out in different ways. For example, there’s some neighborhoods that were built entirely by the residents, who’ve lived there for more than 80 years, and all of a sudden overnight someone claiming to be the owner of that land appears with false papers, everything fabricated, saying they are the real owners of that neighborhood—and it turns out that the neighborhood is within the areas the government has identified in their studies as areas for port expansion, completely ignoring the community already there.  

In the waterfront area that includes the Neighborhoods Won from the Sea, they want to build a touristic boardwalk. It’s a touristic complement to large port companies that want all their new investors from China, Ecuador, Panama to have tourist destinations to visit, and so all the people that live along the water need to leave. [The government] is claiming that the area is high risk [for tsunamis and natural disasters], but we ask, how is it that the area is high-risk for the people that have lived there for more than 150 years, but not for the large hotels and condos that they’re projecting to build there? So we know it’s just an excuse to displace people to make room for megaprojects, and this is happening everywhere: all over the island and the mainland, and we don’t know where we’re going to live. Land is a huge issue here and we don’t have anywhere to go, because wherever [port companies] want to store a container the people there have to leave.”

"Our conflict is not internal, but imposed": Lessons from Colombia for U.S. aid to Central America

By Julia Duranti, Witness for Peace Colombia

In a January op-ed for the New York Times, Vice President Joe Biden called for $1 billion in aid to Central America to address the migration and human rights crisis, citing Colombia as a successful example of U.S. intervention in Latin America. More details on the State Department’s proposal for the Northern Triangle have since emerged, and it appears that social, economic and development aid programs comprise 80 percent of the requested funds—a perfect inversion of Plan Colombia’s counternarcotics and counterinsurgency aid approved 15 years ago. While deemphasizing military aid is a positive development, the current proposal from the Department of State would maintain military and security funding for Central America at current levels, in addition to the separate Department of Defense budgets for foreign military aid.

There is also troubling language about “trade promotion” and economic development that is code for Washington Consensus policies of free trade, privatization and foreign investment.  The current fraught reality in Colombia, a partial result of Plan Colombia and its successor programs and a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the U.S. implemented in 2012, demonstrates that throwing money at the related issues of organized crime, violence and forced displacement – instead of addressing how the same policies actually drive those phenomena – does not solve human rights crises in Latin America.

U.S. intervention in Colombia has been expensive, costing U.S. taxpayers over $9 billion since 2000, not to mention the enormous human cost of the militarization of Colombia’s countryside. Of the seven million victims of the conflict registered since 1954, 5.9 million victimizations have occurred since 2000, when U.S. funding began to support Colombian security forces already known for collaboration with brutal paramilitaries. While paramilitaries officially demobilized in 2005, many simply reformed into loosely organized criminal structures that the Colombian government calls BACRIM, or criminal gangs. The BACRIM act as guns-for-hire involved in drug trafficking, illegal mining, extortion, human trafficking, and protection services for wealthy land and business owners along with multinational corporations.

Now the biggest threat to citizen security, the BACRIM carry out threats, forced disappearances and assassinations against members of Colombian social movements. In January they were responsible for a wave of threats against Colombian journalists and human rights defenders, as well as the 2014 spike in death threats against more than 150 human rights workers, activists and politicians, dubbed “Black September.” The splintering and reclassification of the paramilitaries as BACRIM allows their activities to be painted as a “climate of lawlessness” that justifies U.S. intervention and support for the Colombian state—as if both states had not tacitly encouraged the creation of these groups in the first place via proxy financial support to corrupt armed forces and neoliberal economic policies that decimated economic opportunities outside the informal or illegal sectors.

At six million people, Colombia’s internally displaced population is the second largest in the world. Some are rural farmers driven from their land by Plan Colombia-funded militarization and aerial herbicide fumigations intended to eradicate coca crops. In other cases, powerful monoculture palm oil and banana operations have collaborated with legal and illegal armed actors to force communities off their land. Additional examples of this type of development include sugar cane production for ethanol that has all but replaced agriculture in southwestern Colombia, while the cut flower industry heavily promoted by USAID has devastated food security in the savannah region surrounding the capital of Bogotá.

Even as the U.S. government has promoted these industries in Colombia, it has protected U.S. corporate interests by privileging U.S. corn, ethanol and other agricultural exports to Colombia under the FTA. In the three years since the FTA was implemented, U.S. exports to Colombia have skyrocketed and Colombia has seen its trade surplus of $8.7 billion evaporate and balloon into a trade deficit of $2 billion. Unable to compete with the flood of subsidized U.S. imports, small-scale producers have been driven out of the market, prompting thousands of Colombians to take to the streets in protest of the FTA and related policies in 2013 and 2014.

Violent displacement, the proliferation of paramilitarism via BACRIM, some of the highest corruption in Latin America, widespread impunity for human rights violations and one of the largest gaps between rich and poor in the world continue to haunt Colombia as problems that Plan Colombia successor programs and the FTA failed to address, or even exacerbated. Implementing the same strategy in Central America — already reeling from high violence and crime along with its own FTA with the U.S., DR-CAFTA — is unlikely to lead to better results. If the Obama Administration wants to get serious about a plan for Central America, it should pressure Congress to fund policies that address the true drivers of organized crime and forced migration, like U.S. demand for drugs and harmful trade agreements that privilege large corporations and the wealthy elite at the expense of local economies and communities. 

International Flower Workers Day: While flower companies get tax breaks, workers have to pick up their slack

Cactus, a Colombian NGO that accompanies flower workers and their families in the Bogotá Savannah and participated in a WfP Upper Midwest's October 2014 speaker tour, penned the following statement about the importance of reclaiming February 14 as International Flower Workers Day. Learn more about WfP's 2015 Flower Campaign and the Colombian cut flower industry and its ties to U.S. policy.

By Cactus

In Colombia there are approximately 400 companies that produce cut flowers for export, occupying about 17,000 acres of land. Seventy-three percent of these farms are in the Bogota Savannah, 24 percent in the province of Antioquia and 3 percent in the central area region of the country. Colombia is the second largest flower exporter in the world whose major recipients are the U.S. (76 percent), Japan (4 percent) and the European Union, with annual total sales valued at more than $700 million. In 2013 the industry experienced 1.2 percent growth in production, 4.4 percent growth in exports and 4.3 percent growth in acreage.

All of the above illustrates once again that the Colombian flower industry is successful in spite of adverse climate conditions related to climate change, the revaluation of the peso and international competition. One of the reasons that the industry remains so strong has to do with the unconditional supports that Colombian governments have historically provided to export companies, particularly as related to tax exemptions that the flower sector enjoys.

We are referring specifically to the exemption from the industry and trade tax that companies normally must pay as commercial businesses. The flower industry does not pay such taxes to the municipalities in which they are located, which means they are denying them crucial income that could be reinvested in the region to improve quality of life for residents, especially the flower workers that live there. Another benefit that the flower growers’ association enjoys is an exemption from the 8.5 percent minimum in healthcare contributions and the refund of Value Added Tax (VAT) on agricultural supplies.

For their part, flower workers earn the Colombian minimum wage of 644,000 pesos (about $275 USD) monthly, which is not enough to cover basic necessities. Their health is affected by increased production: in the 1990’s a flower worker was typically responsible for 40 flower beds; that number has since increased to 70. Antiunion practices across the sector also impact workers. This is all in addition to the well-known social-environmental impacts incurred by the intensive use of agrochemicals and high water consumption (5.746 cubic meters per hectare per year) that takes away from the water supply fit for human consumption.

In stark contrast to the benefits that companies receive are the workers that form the base of the pyramid of activities required for flower production, who must pay a Value Added Tax for all goods they purchase. Furthermore, the women and men that work in the flower industry do not actually receive any real benefits from the taxes they pay because the Colombian government is not sufficiently concerned with improving labor and living conditions for the workers in this successful export sector.

If the government makes such an effort to save and incentivize companies, why doesn’t it do the same to address the social and economic crises that workers face, being as how they are fundamental to the industry’s profits? If flower companies actually paid taxes it would be possible for communities, municipalities and flower workers to all benefit from additional social services and other improvements. Corporate Social Responsibility Campaigns that companies have developed are not enough, since they are voluntary and their main motivation is to improve company image.

This is an issue of tax justice. The government should take the necessary measures to demand companies to pay taxes to municipalities, which should be oriented to improve quality of life for the men and women that make this wealth possible.

No more tax exemptions for flower companies! Long live the dignity of flower workers!

Celebrate International Flower Workers Day: Because we are more important than thousands of flowers!

Port Workers Union in Urabá denounce intimidation of unionists and other Labor Action Plan violations

By the Port Workers Union of Colombia

Apartadó, Colombia

December 29, 2014

Cargoban workers demand labor justice

The actions that Cargoban S.A. took against its workers between November 25-December 20, 2014 is an example of the worst of anti-union tactics, which, as usual, hide systematic violations of the most basic labor rights.

Cargoban S.A. is the major logistical port operator in the Urabá region, employing approximately 500 workers. It is owned by Marino Rendón Prado and Miriam Hernandez Osorio and contracts its services to international banana companies: Banacol, Uniban, Conservas del Monte, Banafrut, Corrugados del Darien, Olinsa, Aduanimex and Sara Palma.

On November 25 a group of workers employed by Cargoban S.A. that are also members of the Port Workers Union presented a list of grievances. Highlights include:

1. Shifts of up to 96 consecutive hours with no breaks, no rest and no opportunity to return to their homes, for the workers that labor loading and unloading ships anchored in the Gulf of Urabá.
2. A refusal to pay overtime, nights, holiday and Sunday pay and the negation of mandatory compensated rest and vacations.
3. Temporary contracts for a period of 13 weeks continually renewed for 15 years or more, in violation of laws that mandate after the third renewal such contracts cannot be given for a period of less than one year.
4. Retaining the copy of the work contracts that should be shared with the workers.
5. Hiding internal workplace regulations and excluding workers from knowing their rights, in violation of Constitutional Court Sentence No. C-934-04. The law considers that relevant workplace regulations and policies must be distributed via pamphlets that allow them to be read in full, as many companies do, and not posted in miniscule print on a single poster.
6. Low to absurdly low salaries.
7. The second application of a collective pact made in violation of legal requirements and carried out with an absence of formal reporting, no workers assembly, no election of negotiators, no approval of the conditions set forth in the pact and no formal documentation initiating and finalizing the negotiation. The company simply demanded workers sign the agreement without even having read it.

It is easy to imagine the vulnerability of workers that never received a copy of their work contracts, have never read the workplace regulations and who have temporary contracts of 13 weeks.

Cargoban S.A. responded to the modest list of grievances filed by workers on November 25 by firing union members Harold Peña, Ariel Ballesteros, Euclides Moreno, José Núñez, Jesús Córdoba and Hermes Cuadrado, ignoring the relevant forums for negotiation, union leadership and the Claims Commission of which they are a part.

Workplace and anti-union pressure continues, but workers are determined to resist these attacks. The illegality of Cargoban S.A.'s decisions could be subject to serious sanctions and damage the companies to whom Cargoban S.A. contracts its services. Workers directly employed by Uniban and Banacol urge Cargoban workers to keep their morale high.

The Port Workers Union requests accompaniment and solidarity from regional, national and international organizations to urge Cargoban S.A. to cease their attacks on union rights and to respect basic labor rights. Urabá needs employers that respect human dignity and dignified work.

Direct negotiations around the list of grievances will begin on January 14 and conclude on February 2. We hope to arrive at a civil agreement that dignifies working conditions in the ports.

Privilege and Peace

By Chelsey Dyer, WfP SE Regional Board Member

Margaret Mead, a once famous anthropologist, theorized that warfare is an invention created by humankind. She staunchly rejected the notion that war is a biological or sociological inevitably and argued that should a “method more congruent with the institutions and feelings of the period be invented” war would become obsolete and a new invention would supersede its role. I have often wondered over the veracity of this theory. Over time, citizens have turned to their governments and governments to transnational bodies to prevent citizen abuse during conflicts, end wars, and prevent them from starting. But violence has always remained an option.

Until now.

Until a small community in Colombia created another possibility, a new hope for peace. Despite a perpetuated cycle of violence and economic deterioration that erodes community bonds and the luxury of creativity, a group of dedicated Colombians has continued to persist in their recognition of the defects of war. And so some have created a new invention, a space in which violent actors are evicted and peace is groomed with non-violence and community bonds.

It is the humanitarian space of Puente Nayero.

Situated against the backdrop of Buenaventura, the people of the beachfront neighborhood of Puente Nayero established a humanitarian space with the aid and accompaniment of the Comisión Intereclesial de Justicia y Paz or the Inter-Church Commission of Justice and Peace. Today, their success is echoed in the warmth that filters through the coconut trees and casts its glow on the children at play below, children who are already guaranteed a healthier future. Peace is growing, despite the obstacles the city of Buenaventura provides. With an 80% poverty rate, Buenaventura has been called “ground-zero” for the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA). Enacted in 2012, the FTA immediately eliminated 80% of tariffs on U.S. exports to Colombia, allowing a surge of cheap US goods to enter Colombia. Buenaventura is the primary hub through which 70% of Colombia’s imports and exports pass. As such, this city has been targeted for intensified multinational development and aesthetic improvements to accommodate the heightened presence of business professionals. However, this development has been accompanied by displacement, more turf wars between neoparamilitaries over drug routes and territory, and increasing levels of violence and economic distress.


While the Colombian government attempts to combat rising levels of disappearances, dismemberments, and murders in Buenaventura by increasing its military presence, local community members report the collusion of armed forces with multinational corporations and neo-paramilitaries. Accounts of abuse feed a pervasive mistrust of armed officials and erodes already fragile community bonds. Many citizens in Buenaventura are left with no other options but to shut themselves in their homes after dark for protection; be displaced to the cement compound of San Antonio with few economic, educational, or health opportunities; or join a neo-paramilitary group.

This is what makes the community of Puente Nayero so remarkable. Faced with the aforementioned options, the community created another choice. Peace. In April 2014 the community began to evict all violent actors from their land, reclaimed “chop-up” houses previously used for torture, and began the long journey of rebuilding a supportive a social community.


The clothes drying on the wash line and the neighbors meandering calmly throughout the streets mask the extraordinary nature of Puente Nayero in a veil of banality. Yet, amidst the dirt paved streets and wooden homes the movement for peace continues. In November 2014, paramilitary groups made incursions onto the adjacent street of Piedras Cantan, threatened community leaders and announced their intentions to infiltrate the space. This occured in spite of the community's repeated demands for police presence in the space and protections for leaders. The community was granted collective protective measures (medidas cautelares) by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) in September. This ruling grants official recognition to the humanitarian space as an area under threat and acknowledges the community's heightened risk level due to the lack of government action. With this recognition the IACHR has said the Colombian government must comply with the community's requests for protection. However, history has shown that lack of political will in Colombia can cause well-intended policies to fail. In order for the community’s needs to be fulfilled the Colombian government and National Protections Unit (a division of the Ministry of the Interior tasked with protecting human rights defenders and other citizens under threat) have to comply. As such, this community’s battle for security and peace is far from over:

WHAT ARE THEIR NEEDS?

• · A school bus for children
• · Security cameras and better lighting in the space (for safety)
• · Cell phones and bulletproof vests for leaders
• · Secure transportation and body guards for leaders
• · Police presence five key points in the community which would require local and national government support 
• · Prior consultation with multi-nationals who wish to use their land

It is not easy to fight for peace-to take up arms and blatantly put your body on the front lines. But it is more challenging to live for peace; to forgo weapons, to rely only on your government and your faith in humanity to protect you from those who strive to fight. I am privileged because I have never had to make that choice, violence or non-violence. I was born into peace. And now I want to use my privilege to help the peace in Puente Nayero grow and expand throughout Buenaventura. I want the children in Puente Nayero to dream uninhibited by worries about safety and economic security. I want to believe in Margaret Mead’s idea that warfare can be replaced with a better invention. And this is why I work with Witness for Peace, because they turn my dreams into beliefs and my beliefs into realities. I believe in peace because of communities like Puente Nayero. I believe in peace because even when confronted with decades of war, poverty, and government disdain, people still have hope, people still have alternative solutions for the future. I believe because I know of our victories in the past, and I am ready to win again. Let’s start with Puente Nayero.

WHAT CAN WE DO?

• Write a letter of support to the Puente Nayero community. Send it to WfP SE  and we will translate it (if needed) and forward it on to the community.
• Take a photo of yourself holding a sign of support. Make sure you put where you’re from! Post it to Facebook or Twitter and email it to us.
• Write officials at the Colombian Embassy in Washington, D.C. and the U.S. Embassy in Colombia. Express your support for the community and your wish that their needs be fulfilled.

Another Plan Colombia is no solution for Central America migration crisis

Julia Duranti, Witness for Peace Colombia

While the least-productive Congress in history went on vacation in August without addressing the Central American child refugee crisis, others opined about possible solutions. In an August 5 op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, Luis Alberto Moreno, president of the Inter-American Development Bank, suggested policymakers look further south to Colombia and use the $8 billion Plan Colombia aid package as a model for U.S. assistance to the Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. On August 18, Daniel Runde of the Center for Strategic and International Studies echoed the call in a blog for Foreign Policy.

This is a deeply flawed recommendation for a number of reasons. Plan Colombia was never intended to be a development aid package, but rather a counternarcotics and counterinsurgency strategy at a time when the largest guerrilla insurgency, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), posed a serious risk to the Colombian state. At that time, Colombia was also the world’s top producer of cocaine destined for the U.S. In keeping with the War on Drugs supply-side reduction doctrine, policymakers claimed that by eliminating coca crops—which contain the basic compound needed to process cocaine— rather than reducing the demand for cocaine, they could eradicate the drug problem in the U.S.

They were wrong. While coca production in Colombia initially decreased after Plan Colombia took effect in 2000, it has since stabilized at close to 120,000 acres, and coca cultivation in the neighboring Andean nations of Peru and Bolivia has increased. Nearly fifteen years later, overall cocaine production between the three countries has dropped, but this is a complex phenomenon that also has to do with shifting demand, like reduced cocaine consumption in the U.S.—where heroin use is on the rise. Colombia is still the top supplier of cocaine the U.S., with about 95 percent of the market. Violent groups continue to struggle over access to trafficking routes and processing labs.

The military equipment and training supplied to Colombian state security forces as part of Plan Colombia simply added fuel to the fire in a half-century long conflict for land and natural resources. This conflict involves other armed actors in addition to the guerrillas:  paramilitary death squads, or what the Colombian government now calls “criminal bands.” The Colombian military has a long and storied history of collaborating with these groups to commit some of the worst human rights violations in the 50+ year war, including murders, massacres, forced disappearances, torture and sexual assault.

In a particularly chilling practice known as “false positives,” Colombian military systematically murdered innocent civilians and then dressed them up in guerrilla fatigues, presenting them as enemy kills in order to gain rewards like bonuses and extra vacation time. This practice, it bears mentioning, was developed as part of the “body count” mentality promoted through U.S. training. The Colombian government has opened investigations into 5,000 such cases since the scandal broke in 2005.

It is true that homicides and violent crime have decreased since Plan Colombia began, but only because the conflict has been pushed to the most remote, rural areas of the country. Assassinations have become more targeted as illegal armed actors increasingly rely on threats and forced disappearances, which are harder to classify as politically-motivated crimes. Periods of relative calm in historically violent cities like Medellín and Cali are often the product of the victory of one particular criminal group that then controls the area or truces between rival gangs, rather than better work from law enforcement structures, which continue to at least tacitly support criminal gangs in many areas. Politicians at all levels, from local to national, have been implicated in these narcoparamilitary structures.

Taken together, the aggressive counternarcotics and counterinsurgency agenda pushed by Plan Colombia and funded by U.S. taxpayers has worsened, not improved, Colombia’s human rights crisis. Colombia’s internally displaced population is 5.7 million strong—second in the world only to Syria. The U.S. has never seen a flood of Colombian refugees, but that is because of geographic barriers, not because these refugees don’t exist.

The Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with Colombia, another much-touted growth strategy, has also done little to improve the situation. Colombia´s trade balance with the U.S. has plummeted 200 percent, down from a surplus of $950 million just last year. Meanwhile, the economic growth that Colombia has seen recently is limited to extractive industries, which have serious, destructive environmental impacts, and were not even a target industry under the FTA. Despite stating a commitment to improve Colombia´s abysmal labor rights record under the Labor Action Plan, Colombia is still the most dangerous country in the world for trade unionists, who continue to be threatened and assassinated with impunity. Labor conditions remain precarious, with 60 percent of the workforce employed informally and 30 percent of the country’s population living in poverty.

Faced with these figures, it is hard to argue that Plan Colombia is any kind of solution for the Central American refugee crisis. But powerful defense lobbyists will certainly try; indeed, they already have. U.S. military aid to Colombia has decreased in recent years, first to increase military aid to Mexico to wage a similarly fruitless War on Drugs as part of the Mérida Initiative, and then to decrease aid to both countries in order to prioritize the Central America Regional Security Initiative (CARSI). This shifting production and trafficking of drugs and accompanying violence from Colombia to Mexico to now Central America is the perfect example of U.S. whack-a-mole drug and crime policy at work and illustrates much more failures than successes. Until we hold our policymakers accountable to recognizing that, we will continue to see thousands of migrant children arriving at our borders.

Declaración de la caravana por la paz y la democrácia en Colombia / Statement from the Caravan for Peace and Democracy in Colombia

Feliz día internacional de l@s trabajadores! Hoy concluye nuestra serie de blog enfocada en el comercio. Queremos agradecer a tod@s su participación y atención a estos temas importantes, y compartir un último post antes de irnos a observar la marcha del Primero de Mayo en Bogotá.

Del 21 a 1 de mayo, el sindicato nacional de trabajadores del sector agroalimentario de Colombia, SINALTRAINAL, coordinó una delegación internacional que visitó cuatro regiones del país. Delegad@s de siete países se reunieron con organizaciones comunitarias, sindicatos, defensores de derechos humanos y entidades del gobierno colombiano con el fin de examinar los impactos de las políticas del estado y de los multinacionales en el pueblo colombiano.

Aquí se puede encontrar sus conclusiones y su declaración política, que tocan temas de la militarización, la violencia contra defensores de derechos humanos y sindicalistas, la impunidad, los derechos de las víctimas y los impactos humanos y medioambientales de la falta de regulación de prácticas empresariales.

En solidaridad,
Equipo de APP Colombia


Happy International Workers Day! Today concludes our Trade Blog Series. We want to thank everyone for your participation and attention to these important issues, and share one last post before we head out to observe the May Day March in Bogotá. 

From April 21-May 1, Colombia's national Food Service Worker's Union, SINALTRAINAL, coordinated an international delegation that visited four different regions of the country. Delegates from seven countries met with community organizations, unions, human rights defenders and Colombian government entities to examine the impacts of both government and multinational policies on Colombian civil society.

Their conclusions and final statement, which touches on militarization, violence against unionists and human rights defenders, impunity, victims´ rights, and environmental and human impacts of largely-unregulated corporate practices, can be read here.

In solidarity,
WfP Colombia Team

San Jose, Buenaventura: Ground zero for Free Trade in Colombia

By Chelsey Dyer, WfP Southeast Board

The Port of Bueanventura. Photo credit: Chelsea Dyer

 The houses surrounding me were small wooden structures, built by the hands of the community members who settled in them and developed their lives within their walls. The taste of salt tickled my lips. Wind from the nearby ocean struggled to embrace me in its cooling waves, but the heat of the day and emotion refused to lift. I trod carefully, absorbing the uniqueness and beauty of my surroundings. Occasionally my feet would stumble beneath me, tripping over the shell laden ground as I struggled to comprehend stories of murder, grief, and hope. I was in San Jose, or Sanyu- a small community in the port city of Buenaventura, Colombia- meeting with community members as part of a Witness for Peace Delegation. On this day I heard about how the municipal government was threatening to relocate this community to make way for a boardwalk, and for a brief moment, I entered into the daily reality of tension and frustration of free trade. A reality of homes being bulldozed for tourism and of heritage being forsaken for profit. A reality that residents of San Jose could not escape.

There were individuals whose families had lived in the community since the dawn of its existence, families who had moved there after being displaced from their former homes, and criminals who sought to keep them all under their reign of power and fear. All were irreversibly affected by the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement. Here, in the daily lives of residents Free Trade was not about pesos, or dollars, or profit. Free trade was fear. It was insecurity. It was volatility.

San Jose is one of many neighborhoods affected by free trade in Buenaventura, a bustling city that contains Colombia's largest port and moves about 60% of the nation’s imports and exports. In addition to international port commerce, the majority of Buenaventura’s local economy depends on the ocean, and the local and national governments are increasingly looking to take advantage of the city’s coastal location to develop bigger and more ambitious tourism projects, seeming to pay more attention to attracting foreigners than serving the needs of citizens. In 2012, Colombia and the United States implemented an Free Trade Agreement (FTA) agreement) that immediately eliminated 80% of tariffs on exported goods. Businesses promised that this free market policy would maximize profits, increase employment and spur economic growth. Communities like San Jose were expressly excluded from the official dialogue, a dialogue that never addressed the reality that such communities would be unlikely to share in this supposed growth.

Left: Traditional fishing boats used by San Jose residents. Right: The community of San Jose contrasted with the encroaching high rises behind them. Photo credit: Chelsea Dyer

San Jose community members still catch fish in their traditional long boats. They harvest mussels, using the meat for sustenance and the shells to craft the floors of their homes. The ocean is more than just an economy. It is a livelihood, a culture, and a mechanism of autonomy and sustainability for the people. Yet, with support from the national government, Buenaventura's municipal government is in the process of forcibly relocating the community to a new neighborhood of cheap, prefabricated houses that sit miles away from the sea. No one consulted San Jose community members about this decision. No one informed them ofother economic opportunities. There are no schools, health clinics or other social services in their new, isolated neighborhood. A community that has survived off of the ocean for more than 70 years is being moved to a compound far from their existing economy, community, and heritage.

With voices silenced, muted by big business and choked with fear, the hope of Buenaventura residents still endures, but violence in the city continues to increase. The situation in Buenaventura supports the idea that when people have no access to viable alternative economic opportunities, they often turn to those that involve violence.

This March, President Juan Manuel Santos ordered an additional 380 policemen and 400 marines to Buenaventura to help combat the violence. Yet, as a recent report by the Interchurch Commission on Justice and Peace stated, “When civilians sought help from the military to prevent the paramilitaries from killing a neighbor, the officers told them that ‘we can’t do anything, our job is to protect wealth.’” Community leaders have repeatedly stated that they do not want more boots on the ground or weapons in Buenaventura, but rather that security will come from investment in their city to create jobs, economic opportunities and thriving communities. According to reports in the press, Buenaventura generates about $2 million USD in tax revenue for Colombia, but only about $150,000 of that money is reinvested in the city, and none of that trickles down to neighborhoods like Sanyu or port workers and their families. After selling Free Trade on false pretenses, the government's strategy has been to send more troops into what is already Colombia’s most militarized city and displace those who are in the way of plans for “development”. More guns, more violence, more fear. And more displacement to keep the problems of the city “out-of-sight, out-of-mind,” altering the aesthetics of the problem while ignoring the root cause.

The Human Face (and Price) of Trade

The Witness blog series is back!

This month, Witness for Peace, in close collaboration with coalition partners in the United States and partners on the ground in Colombia, Nicaragua, Honduras and Mexico, is hosting our second annual blog series – this one focused on the changing system of international trade and its effects on communities both small and large.

When most people hear the word “trade,” their eyes already start to glaze over, visions of tariffs and collective bargaining agreements dancing in their hands. This is understandable – at first, trade doesn’t exactly seem like the most exciting topic, tied up as it is with broader issues of economics, national sovereignty, imports/exports and labor rights. However, trade has implications that reach far beyond the entrances to ports and meeting halls – really, if you’ve ever bought anything or had a job, trade has affected you in some way. Over the course of the next month, we’ll be using this space on the Witness blog to explore the many ways trade changes lives, livelihoods and environments, from small-scale farmers in the U.S. Midwest to port workers in the Colombian city of Buenaventura.

The topics of free trade, unions, workers’ rights and economic policy have become increasingly important throughout the Americas since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect in 1994, creating a trade bloc between the U.S., Canada and Mexico, and opening the door for subsequent economic policies and practices that prioritized corporations and multinational companies over unions and workers themselves. Since then, such agreements have spread across the region, with the U.S. signing free trade accords with countries including Chile, Peru, Colombia and the majority of Central America.

Though supporters in governments and the business world insist that such agreements help boost competition and encourage sales, the truth is that the few individuals and corporations at the top are those that truly profit, while laborers, farmers and small businesses see few of the benefits and are often left worse off than they were before the agreement took effect. Such agreements lead to lower prices on imported goods that  leave local businesses unable to compete without incurring significant losses; allow much greater influence for multinational corporations; facilitate widespread third-party contracting; and encourage extensive outsourcing in a "race to the bottom." These effects are well-documented, and some communities are refusing to simply accept them as inevitable. Last August, Colombia’s farmers began a national strike that quickly spread across the country and reached the largest cities, primarily as a response to the negative effects the U.S.-Colombia free trade agreement, signed in 2011, had on their communities and their livelihoods.

Well-researched critiques and comprehensive analyses of such agreements are now more important than ever, with the U.S. on the verge of signing the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which would become the most far-reaching trade agreement in the hemisphere and grant a staggering amount of rights and privileges to corporations and business interests, potentially even overriding national sovereignty and laws in some cases. Through this blog series, we will examine the effects and lessons learned from current trade agreements and labor practices throughout the Americas, and hope to shed some light on the potential regional and global impact of the TPP as well as bring more attention to what’s happening in our own backyards and in thousands of other cities and towns across the continents.

Check back here every weekday for bilingual posts highlighting some of the effects free trade agreements and changes in trade and labor policy have had on individuals and communities throughout the Americas, and how some of our writers have seen those changes reflected in their own lives and the lives of others. Feel free to take a look at our 2013 Drug War blog series as well.

GM Workers Enter 4th Week on Hunger Strike with Growing International Support

By Austin Robles
WFP Colombia

Dozens of people protested in front of GM's headquarters in Detroit last week, outraged at the company's treatment of its Colombian workers. In Bogotá, 2,700 miles away, a small group of Colombian men were touched by their actions. "They've changed my perception of what I thought Americans were like," one of them told me. “They’ve never met us but they’re doing so much for us.”

Witness for Peace Colombia Team fasting in solidarity with Asotrecol   

I met Jorge my second week in Colombia. I went to meet officials at the U.S. Embassy and immediately noticed a make-shift camp outside the main entrance. Living there are 13 men who belong to the Association of Injured Workers and Ex-Workers of General Motors Colmotores (Asotrecol), and they just commemorated their protest’s anniversary.

A welder at General Motors’ South American subsidiary, Colmotores, Jorge performed manual labor at the plant until he was disabled. He underwent three surgeries and now walks with a cane in his hand and several screws in his spine. GM fired him when he could no longer work due to his workplace injuries, and paid him no medical benefits or severance.

In conversations about Jorge’s case with people in the United States, I sometimes hear that I can’t expect the same standards here that would be applied stateside. The issue in Jorge’s case is that GM didn’t even meet Colombian legal standards. The Ministry of Labor had to review workers’ medical records to ensure they incurred no workplace injuries. The Inspector on some Asotrecol members’ cases was convicted for falsifying records and has a warrant out for his arrest. Colpatria, Jorge's professional risk insurance provider, was also fined for illegally changing his medical records to reflect "common" rather than "occupational" injuries. Sadly, the falsified records do not get nullified automatically, and cases do not get reversed due to corrupt oversight, so Jorge and others in his situation have not received justice.

After one year without any sign of a resolution from GM, Jorge decided to sew his mouth shut and go on hunger strike until his case is resolved. Minutes before he put six stitches in his lips, Jorge explained his rationale to me: “Essentially GM gave us a choice: to die of hunger or to die waiting for them to solve this problem.”

The hardest part of working on Jorge’s case has been fighting for social justice against a U.S. corporation. In every country I’ve lived or traveled, locals have almost always differentiated between the U.S. people’s good nature, U.S. companies’ greed, and the U.S. government’s indifference.

It is sad to have to differentiate between U.S. entities when our ideals and behavior should be based on justice uniformly. Colombians shouldn’t have to react with surprise when people in the States stand up against injustice, even when it’s for someone we’ve never met. GM should be ashamed not just for violating Colombian law, but for not setting a standard that could improve labor conditions in Colombia. The U.S. government, which bailed out GM with $50 billion and remains one of its largest shareholders, should also be ashamed for not holding GM accountable for human rights abuses. Companies and governments are the institutions with the power to make the most noticeable impact abroad, but, in this case, have fallen far short of improving human rights conditions.

I have gone to see Jorge almost every day since he stopped eating. He no longer has the energy or optimism he used to boast, and he is worried GM will let him die before settling his small claim. Across the United States, people are starting to take notice of this case. In over 20 states, they fasted or held protests in solidarity with Jorge and Asotrecol this past Wednesday. They will hold more this Friday, not just in the U.S., but also in Brazil, Canada, and Germany.

As Jorge enters his 4th week on hunger strike, I hope that GM soon corrects its error in this case, and that it one day realizes that it can be a force for positive global change.

Labor Action Plan Monitoring Report

This is a Labor Action Plan Monitoring report done by Witness for Peace delegates and International Team this past July. It includes the on-the-ground labor reality for Colombian workers now that the Free Trade Agreement between Colombia and the U.S. has been implemented. The report includes specific recommendations and case studies  for U.S. officials, policymakers and civil society to track where labor law is not complied with and bring about effective change set out by U.S. and Colombian labor accords.

Labor Reality in Colombia

Continued Violations of the Colombian Action Plan Related to Labor Rights:

Witness For Peace July 2012 Delegation Report

August 1, 2012

Introduction:

The purpose of this report is to convey the findings and recommendations of the Witness for Peace delegation that conducted an independent investigation of labor rights in Colombia from July 20-30, 2012. Our ten-person delegation was comprised of two full-time Witness for Peace staff living in Colombia and eight delegates from the United States including trade unionists, educators, activists, and NGO workers. This delegation specifically aimed to assess the implementation of the Labor Action Plan now that the U.S. – Colombia Free Trade Agreement is in effect. Through meeting with affected groups and advocacy organizations, we found multiple and egregious violations of the plan in the areas of Cooperatives, Collective Pacts, and Violence and Impunity, as well as a lack of response to the troubling consequences of the FTA for women in Colombia. As the United States is now complicit in these labor rights violations, we ask that the U.S. Embassy do everything in its power to act on this information to remedy the continued violations of the Labor Action Plan.

I. Cooperatives

The Colombian Action Plan Related to Labor Rights intended to prohibit the misuse of subcontracting by cooperatives and temporary service agencies. Witness for Peace July 2012 delegation has found that they have been replaced by new and just as prevalent forms of intermediary employment and third party contracting. The Labor Action Plan identifies the port sector as a priority. Buenaventura illustrates the egregious labor violations of this plan. Our visit to the port provided clear examples of noncompliance with the Labor Action Plan through a variety of methods:

New forms of subcontracting

A Simplified Stock Association (SAS) is a new form of subcontracting agency that has replaced cooperatives. The port of Buenaventura and Sociedad Portuaria is especially dramatic in this regard with over 700 intermediary companies such as Simplified Stock Associations.

·        Compania Servicios Portuario Esapecializada (CSPE) is one of many SAS operated by the pro-managerial union Sintramaritimo. More and more of these “unions” are adopting subcontracting mechanisms as a means of skirting around the cooperatives. CSPE is an important example that limits workers’ rights by preventing direct contracts with corporate employers which would provide direct accountability and stability. Workers employed through CSPE have been denied their legitimate benefits and job security through their employment by a third party contractor.

·        The cooperative Coowinpropa reinvented itself as a SAS named Artica. Then it transformed itself once more into another SAS called Ecpe. However, the owner remained the same in all three forms. This not only prevented direct contracts, but it also imposed temporary employment.

Conditions on Direct Contracts

The most common demand by port workers is a direct contract relationship with the corporations.

·        Often direct contracts place conditions on workers; most commonly workers are forced to agree to not join or to withdraw from the Union Portuaria (otherwise known as a “yellow dog contract”). TECSA, in addition to employing workers through intermediaries, enforced the condition that workers not be represented by the Union Portuaria in its direct contracts with workers. Intermodal S.A.S. required that workers not be represented by the Union Portuaria and demanded that workers withdraw their complaints from the Labor Ministry. Prodeco offered workers direct contracts only if they withdrew from the union and kept their contracts secret.

Expansion of Precarious Work

According to the Labor Action Plan, temporary work arrangements are not to be used to undermine labor rights.

Workers with Intermodal S.A.S. report that even when they receive a direct contract, the duration rarely exceeds 4-6 months. These short term contracts enable a high turnover of workforce and maintain low wages, poor working conditions, meager benefits and the inability to accumulate seniority.  

The Labor Action Plan requires direct contracts and steady work for “permanent core functions.”  However, workers report that the short contracts and new intermediaries are eroding job security even in areas of core function of the port.

Proliferation of Competing Unions

The creation of competing unions undermines workers’ collective bargaining rights. Many of these unions have only a small number of members and receive preferential treatment from companies. In Buenaventura, for example, Sintramaritimo, is described by workers as a “sindicato patronal,” because it collaborates with the company to undermine negotiations. It also received resources from the mayor’s office for rent in the amount of 1,500,000 pesos.

Non-compliance

As pointed out by the previous Witness for Peace delegation in February, there is an ongoing problem with inspections.

Even though the Colombian government complied with the hiring of additional inspectors, they are not trained adequately to identify these new forms of subcontracting.  When fines are imposed they are inadequate in amount (a 56 million peso limit), they can be appealed interminably, and they do not deter corporations from repeat violations.  For large multinationals the fines are not a deterrent and for smaller companies it justifies bankruptcy and leads to reincorporation without improvement of labor conditions for workers.

In fact, of the 91 fines imposed, no fines nor any criminal sanction for anti-union violence have been carried out.  (See the list of imposed fines attached.)

Under Section III Part B, the “strategy of offering to waive fines wholly or in part when the employer agrees to create and maintain a direct employment relationship” allows the companies to get away with their violations.

In requests for clarification of Decree 2025, the Labor Ministry has exempted the very forms of labor outsourcing that are meant to be prevented by the Labor Action Plan.

Additional Concerns

We have serious additional concerns about the labor and human rights conditions at the port and in Buenaventura:

·        Ongoing death threats against union leaders

·        Blatant racism by employers of Afro-Colombian workers

·        Lack of social investment by the port companies in the community

·        The increase in sexual violence against women and child prostitution

Recommendations

·        Advocate for broader language and clearer interpretation of labor law to include all forms of third party subcontracting and outsourcing 

·        Train more labor inspectors to ensure frequency of inspection, monitoring, and follow-up

·        Promote compliance through the application of fines and criminal penalties since no fines nor any criminal sanction for anti union violence have been carried out.

·        Secure the increase in direct employment relationships without conditions that undermine “the right to organize and bargain collectively”

·        Protect threatened unionists and issue an immediate embassy denunciation of any act of violence against workers

II.  Collective Pacts

Another key issue undermining freedom of association in Colombia is the continued use of collective pacts and the lack of enforcement to prevent such pacts.

As you are aware, Section V of the Labor Action Plan provides for reforming the Criminal Code of Colombia to criminalize collective pacts that are used to undermine the right to organize. In addition, the Labor Action Plan says that the Ministry of Social Protections, now the Labor Ministry, “will implement a robust enforcement regime . . . to detect and prosecute violations.” Unfortunately, these provisions of the Labor Action Plan on collective pacts are not being fulfilled.

In collective pacts, workers are offered short-term benefits and improved working conditions in exchange for renouncing their right to join an independent labor union, effectively removing their right to organize and allowing the company to dictate all conditions of employment. Without an independent labor union to represent workers’ interests, workers cannot effectively defend their rights and enjoy full protections of the labor code.

General Motors Colombia is one company that continues to use collective pacts to the detriment of labor rights. Since 2003, GM Colombia has signed a collective pact with workers every two years, with the last one signed in January of 2012. At the signing this year, GM workers were incentivized with money to sign the pact, which explicitly prohibits them from joining an independent union. Workers were told that their continued employment was dependent on signing the pact, so in fact they had no choice but to accept the imposed conditions. The individuals who ostensibly represented the workers were not elected and instead were appointed by GM management.

The lack of independent labor representation for GM workers has exacerbated conflicts between workers and management and left many workers subject to illegal firings. For example, workers have documented systemic patterns of illegal terminations due to workplace injuries, including debilitating conditions requiring major surgery that limit mobility and employment options for workers. Company practices included the sharing of medical records from the company clinic doctors with management, who then fired workers based on this confidential information.

Both General Motors Colombia and the Ministry of Labor were complicit in the illegal firing of injured workers. In the last year, worker complaints prompted the Labor Ministry and the Procuraduría to investigate these firings and concluded that GM had violated labor law. In a follow-up investigation, workers’ medical records disappeared from company files, and the Procuraduría was not present as required by law.  Moreover, the labor inspector who signed off on the firings, as well as the GM lawyer, have been sanctioned by the Attorney General for their illegal actions.

These illegal firings led to the formation in May 2011 of the Association of Injured Workers and Ex-Workers of General Motors Colombia (ASOTRECOL). The founder of this organization, Jorge Parra, was fired two months later in retaliation for exercising his right to freedom of association. Without effective union representation, these workers have taken their grievances to the public by protesting in front of the U.S. Embassy. These workers are seeking reinstatement to jobs appropriate to their physical abilities; the right to form a labor union; and pensions for those workers too ill to resume employment based on their workplace injuries.

The continued existence of collective pacts and the systemic failure to prosecute labor violations indicates that the Labor Action Plan has not been implemented in full as required by U.S. Congress with the passage of the Colombian Free Trade Agreement. As concerned U.S. citizens who are closely monitoring the labor and human situation in Colombia, we request the U.S. Embassy to take the following actions:

§      Investigate the collective pact signed by General Motors with its workers that undermines their rights to organize

§      Press the Colombian government to prosecute those illegal actions under the new criminal code implemented as part of the Labor Action Plan

§      Resume discussions with ASOTRECOL and assist in the resolution of the labor conflict between GM and these illegally fired workers by advocating for the reinstatement of these workers, pensions for those with disabilities that prevent their employment, and the formation of an independent labor union

§      Work with the Colombian government to ensure the “robust enforcement” required by the Labor Action Plan Section V is carried out

III.  Violence Against Trade Unionists, Impunity for Offenders

            Colombia is known for having the highest rate of violence against trade union members and labor activists. While we believe that the initiatives included in the Labor Action Plan, such as broadening the definition of who is covered in the Colombian government’s protection program and the implementation of criminal justice reforms are a step in the right direction, we are still extremely concerned with the levels of impunity, violence and threats within the labor sector. In spite of the intended additions of 95 judicial police investigators and 480 new labor inspectors, there are abundant cases of union-related violence, threats, and other forms of intimidation towards union leaders.

            Even after both the Colombian and United States governments signed the Labor Action Plan in April 2011, labor leaders have been victims of over 500 death threats and 29 assassinations. One such case is that of Daniel Aguirre, the Secretary General and founder of SINALCORTEROS. Mr. Aguirre was assassinated on April 27, 2012 and to this date no justice has been served. Immediate action is necessary to solve this case and bring justice to the perpetrators since Mr. Aguirre is the first union leader to be killed since President Obama declared implementation of the free trade agreement.

            Other assassinations this year include that of Mauricio Redondo of USO, who was killed along with his wife on January 17 in Puerto Asis, Putumayo, and Alexander Gonzales Blandon of SINTRAENTEDDIMCCOL who was murdered on January 19, 2012 in Bugalagrande, Valle del Cauca. In 2011, the death of SINALTRAINAL member John Fredy Carmona, whose body was discovered on December 9 in Medellin, and the paramilitary attack of SINALTRAINAL Executive Committee Member Juan Carlos Galvis on November 9 have not been sufficiently investigated.

            We are concerned that these deaths will only be further additions to the backlog of cases that have perpetuated impunity in Colombian society. Such cases include Luciano Romero of SINALTRAINAL, who was stabbed to death in 2005. In fact, in SINALTRAINAL’s thirty years of existence, 24 union members have been killed, 2 disappeared, 14 imprisoned, 80 death threats received, 49 forcibly displaced, 6 exiled, and several attacked. These acts of violence against unionists are met with widespread impunity: of the 2,886 trade unionists murdered since 1986 less than 10 percent have led to a conviction. The impunity rate remains intolerable even for violence that has occurred after the passage of the Labor Action Plan.

            The continued persecution of trade unionists and labor activists is further amplified considering the fact that only 3.9% of the Colombian workforce is unionized. Death threats are another method used by re-armed paramilitary units, who in some cases cooperate with multinationals, to inculcate fear among union leaders and labor activists. The very same week that the FTA went into effect, the following labor union leaders and their families’ received death threats:

·        Jhon Jairo Castro of Union Portuaria (Port Workers’ Union)

·        Johnnson Torres Ortis of SINALCORTEROS

·        Rene Morales Silva of SINTRAINAGRO

This year, leaders of SINTRAEMCALI were threatened by the paramilitary group the Black Eagles. SINTRAINAGRO has received 13 death threats and union member Henry Diaz was disappeared.  

            Given the alarming rates of persistent threats and acts of violence, we have noticed that the implementations of the protection programs and judicial reforms delineated in the Labor Action Plan have not been achieved.  It is imperative that the Colombian government, with the support of the United States, ensures their compliance with the specific programs and initiatives outlined in the Labor Action Plan.

IV.  The Omission of Women's Voices in the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement

The concerns of Colombian women were not taken into consideration with the development and passage of the FTA, either through a government study or listening to the case of the women's movement.  Without the inclusion of specific protections for women, the FTA cannot stand as a just document.  The obligation to reduce discrimination against women is present in the Colombian Constitution as well as various international humanitarian agreements, but is absent from the FTA.  Discrimination based on gender is rampant in Colombia, and has worsened during the past five years of free trade negotiation.  According to a 2007 NGO report, the salary gap between men and women holding the same position was 14.28%.  According to the women's division of the Central Unitario de Trabajadores (CUT), the rate has doubled to 28.9% today.  Additionally, the increased economic inequality and instability caused by the FTA forces more people (especially women) to work in the precarious informal sector, without healthcare, contracts, or protection from the Labor Action Plan.

The major concerns held by women of the Sabana of Bogota during their First Popular Women's Assembly surrounded threats to the environment and the local economy. The government does not monitor the flower industry's water or soil pollution, or hold companies responsible for these negative externalities.  The displacement of food crops for monoculture and flower production has decreased agricultural job opportunities, and created precarious employment where wages are suddenly lowered or hours reduced.  Despite being hailed as one of the most unionized industries in Colombia, due to the prevalence of sindicatos patronales which are headed by the company,  the union Untraflores is alone in truly seeking to protect workers’ rights.   Furthermore, cheap agricultural imports have destroyed women's capacity to compete with their own micro-economic agricultural enterprises. 

The women most disproportionately affected by the FTA are indigenous and Afro-Colombian, as well as poor campesina women in rural areas, because of displacement by armed groups or multinational economic interests. Colombia has the highest rate of displacement in the world, and many indigenous communities are on the verge of extinction.  According to a leading indigenous organization in Cauca, more than 6,000 people have been displaced in their region this year alone.  Community leaders are concerned that this generation of children has only known violence, and child recruitment continues to be a serious problem. The ethnic rights of indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities protected by the International Labor Organization (ILO) decrees were ignored by the parties who approved the FTA without consulting either community.  

Signed:

Mary Bellman

Bethany Carson

Amanda Ciafone

Kate Dillon

Jessica Hayssen

Omar Martinez

Ruth Needleman`

Robert Winslow

Carlos Cruz, Witness For Peace International Team

Jessica Weinstein, Witness for Peace International Team