ISDS Case Map
Colombia
Colombian unions and farmers opposed the free trade agreement strongly, and today hold it responsible for increasing poverty while fostering a climate in which corporate rights are paramount and labor rights hardly exist.
The Legislative Assembly of Costa Rica ratified a free trade agreement with Colombia on Thursday night that covers approximately 70 percent of exports from both countries, according to an official source on Friday.
Colombian farmer leader César Pachón, a representative of the group Dignidad Papera, said that the movement may take to the roads to protest on April 20 against the delay in goverment compliance with agreements with the sector.
The conditions of Buenaventura’s longshore workers, and the harsh reprisals against them for trying to form unions, dramatically illustrate the failure of Colombia’s Labor Action Plan.
Things are getting worse and worse,” Enrique Muñoz, a 67-year-old farmer from the municipality of Cajamarca in the central Colombian department of Tolima, once known as the country’s breadbasket, said sadly.
This is the third time the Conservative government has attempted to produce an impact assessment of its 2011 FTA with Colombia, as required by law, and each time the final report has been completely inadequate.
On Monday, representatives of indigenous communities, Afro-Colombians, and campesinos held demonstrations in Plaza Bolívar, Bogotá, to demand a new agriculture policy seeking solutions to the problem of land access and greater protection from free trade agreements.
The Legislative Assembly of Costa Rica has approved the country's Free Trade Agreement with Colombia, a prerequisite for Costa Rica to gain admittance into the Pacific Alliance group, composed of Mexico, Colombia, Peru and Chile.
A promised increase in exports to the United States as a result of a free trade agreement has failed to materialize as exports contracted 15.5%, according to Colombia’s statistics agency.
The very same policies which undermined the livelihoods of the approximately 2 million small farmers in Mexico who were displaced as a consequence are devastating the Colombian country side now.
