By Adrienne Wiebe
On Tuesday this week (May 15) a car bomb exploded in Bogota and the Canadian government released its first report on the Human Rights impact of the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA).
In a blog posting on August 25, 2011, I wrote about the new Canada-Colombia FTA, and the intense debate about the benefits and the problems of this type of economic initiative in a country with extreme income disparities, an unresolved armed conflict and a very poor human rights record.
Ottawa: A Human Rights Report
The Human Rights report released on Tuesday in Ottawa fulfills the requirement of an annual review of the human rights impacts of the trade agreement; a requirement that was included in the agreement in order to gain support in Parliament from those who questioned the appropriateness of such an agreement.
Unfortunately, the report contained very little concrete information on human rights in Colombia. According to Canadian government officials, there was no time for a full study because the FTA has only been in place for 4.5 months. Critics question the lack of content, and are frustrated that a pre-FTA study was not done to provide baseline data upon which to do the annual evaluations.
Human Rights Concerns
Civil society organizations feared the FTA would increase and protect the kinds of investment that are most associated with militarization, violence and forced displacement in Colombia, such as mining, oil, and plantations for biofuel. Frequently people are displaced from their communities as a result of struggles over land for these highly-profitable mega-projects.
“MCC Colombia works closely with communities where Canadian and other foreign mining companies are staking their interests,” says Bonnie Klassen, MCC Representative in Colombia. “Community leaders, who still nostalgically remember a history of peace in their region, now no longer talk about if they might be displaced, but rather when they will be displaced off of their land.”
Colombia has the highest rate of internal displacement in the world. More than 259,000 people were forced to flee their homes and land in 2011 alone, with the total number of displaced people now estimated to be as high as 5 million.
The human rights impacts of the FTA on labour organizers and indigenous peoples are also a concern. Colombia is home to 49 of the 90 trade unionists murdered worldwide in 2010. The Colombian Constitutional Court estimates that at least one third of Indigenous nations in the country face an imminent threat of extinction as a consequence of forced displacement and other human rights violations.
Bogota: A Violent Attack
Paradoxically, on the same day that the HR report was released in Ottawa, a powerful car bomb exploded in Bogota. Apparently targeting the former Interior Minister, the explosion injured 40 people and killed two. While it has not been determined who is responsible, the attack is a forceful indicator that the conflict in Colombia is far from resolved.
“Finding out who perpetrated this particular horrible act of violence is important, for the sake of truth,” says Klassen, “but in reality, it is one of countless visible and invisible violations in which death is a tool for powerful actors seeking to impose their interests. Is this really where Canada should be doing business?”
References
http://www.canada.com/business/Human+rights+report+Colombia+panned+whitewash/6633237/story.html
[…] But this year, several opposition MPs and human rights and development organizations were thoroughly disappointed with the quality and content (or lack thereof) in the human rights report tabled in May 2012. The Government claimed that since a full year had not passed since the implementation of the Canada-Colombia FTA that there was insufficient information for a full report (previous blog about this). […]