ISDS Case Map
actions | resistance
Citing “serious and systematic” human rights violations in Colombia, 33 non-governmental organizations led by Alliance Sud, the Berne Declaration and the Swiss Working Group on Colombia sent a letter 12 May to deputies urging them not to ratify the trade agreement between the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), of which Switzerland is a member, and Colombia.
Two hoary old myths are peddled as a means to get NZ out of its particular corner of the global economic crisis -- that the economy needs to be opened up even more to foreign investors, by means of liberalising, yet again, the Overseas Investment Act; and that a Free Trade Agreement with the US is the Holy Grail of the numerous trade deals that the Government is currently pursuing. The Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA) says “no” to both and we are not alone.
Indigenous leaders from around the world are joined by supporters in a demonstration today outside the Peru's Mission to the United Nations, urging the Alan Garcia Government to respect indigenous peoples' rights and repeal a series of new laws passed under the pretext of implementing the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the United States.
As the global economic crisis deepens and more people lose their jobs, the Obama administration may soon push for ratification of the Bush-era US-Panama Free Trade Agreement (FTA).
As Canadian mining giant Barrick Gold gets ready to start construction at the Pascua Lama mine, straddling the Argentine-Chilean border, activists in Chile are scrambling to block the ambitious mining project while calling for an investigation of supposed irregularities committed in the approval process.
Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party Chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen announced that her party would launch a drive to collect one million signatures for a national citizen referendum on the Kuomintang government's plan to sign an economic cooperation agreement with China and declared that the end of a 24-hour sit-in in front of the presidential office marked "the beginning of a second democratic reform movement."
Free trade protests are growing in Peru. A group of indigenous activists began demonstrating in April against the FTA with the United States, claiming the agreement robs them of their land and resource rights - instead selling rights to oil, mining, logging and agricultural companies.
The United Steelworkers and other US union activists are touring the Midwest by bus advocating foreign trade and health care reforms and a “buy American” mentality, saying increasing poverty and long lines at food pantries are a result of jobs lost to the Central American Free Trade Agreement, North American Free Trade Agreement and other free trade policies.
As the Peruvian government declared a state of emergency in the face of one month long indigenous protests, 42 indigenous leaders have entered the Peruvian Congress to announce a hunger strike until the issue of a repeal of decrees affecting the territorial rights of indigenous peoples in the Amazon is debated by the full legislature. The decrees, which were passed to facilitate the Free Trade Agreement with the United States, facilitate the transfer of Amazon land and resource rights to oil, mining, logging and agricultural companies to the detriment of indigenous and campesino inhabitants. They also set the stage for the privatization of water resources.
Despite calls from labour and human rights organizations across Canada, on May 1 Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff announced that the party would support the ratification of a proposed Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (CCFTA).
