ISDS Case Map
Colombia
President George W. Bush urged U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday to put aside differences over a free trade agreement with Colombia and approve the pact to show support for a strong U.S. ally at the center of a crisis in Latin America.
"Even if Colombia had a sterling record on human rights, if there were no assassinations of trade unionists, the Colombia free trade agreement would still be a bad idea," said Economic Policy Institute global policy director Tony Avirgan.
The US House of Representatives on Wednesday approved a 10-month extension of a trade program aimed at promoting imports from four Andean nations and thus discouraging the cultivation and production of illegal drugs.
Top labor leaders ended a trip to Colombia Feb. 13 by telling that country's president, Alvaro Uribe, that American unions will not support the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement until the killing of union members by right-wing death squads there is put to a stop.
The US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement is considered a non-starter in the US Congress because the country is the world's deadliest for union activists. Less known, but equally disturbing is the systematic violence now confronting Afro-Colombians.
How can Canada denounce human rights abuses in China while turning a blind eye to the mass political murder of trade unionists in Colombia?
Interview with Manuel Rozenthal, long-time international solidarity activist and surgeon, and member of the Association of Indigenous Councils of Northern Cauca, about the proposed Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement,
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper's role in lobbying the United States Congress to ratify its free trade deal with Colombia has been warmly acknowledged by the Latin American nation's government amidst mounting opposition to Canada's efforts to ink an agreement of its own.
There is no moral justification for the United States and Canada negotiating a free trade agreement with Colombia when the foundation of these pacts is the slaughter of Colombian unionists. The perpetrators of these crimes should not be rewarded with an agreement that most Colombians do not want.
Bush is now presenting the FTA to Congress as the main US policy tool to halt the influence of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez
