ISDS Case Map
Colombia
The Colombia agreement is more controversial than the nearly identical deal with Peru because many US lawmakers believe Colombian President Alvaro Uribe still has not done enough to stop murders of labor unionists and bring their killers to justice.
Even the New York Times, which has reported very little about the horrendous violence against Colombia's workers and campesinos, in an Oct. 8 editorial recommended that the pending Free Trade Agreement with Colombia be delayed because “President Álvaro Uribe and his government have not done enough to bring to justice the paramilitary thugs-and their political backers-responsible for widespread human rights violations.”
The Bush administration has enlisted an unlikely ally in its international trade agenda: Hugo Chávez, the leftist president of Venezuela, who makes a practice of denouncing United States' influence in Latin America.
Bush urged Congress on Friday to approve free-trade agreements with Peru, Panama and Colombia "as soon as possible," saying failure to do so would diminish US leadership in the hemisphere.
Once again the Bush-Uribe administration has launched a propaganda offensive to pressure for approval of the FTA in the United States.
Colombia's free trade accord with the United States is still a "work in progress" and President Uribe could persuade US Democrats to approve the deal by showing sustained success in tackling violence, a US lawmaker said on Saturday.
More and more US Democrats, many of whom have been skeptical about the Bush administration's trade agenda in Latin America, now support pending free trade agreements with Peru, Colombia, and Panama.
Colombia signed a free trade agreement Thursday with Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador that could double exports to the Central American countries in five years.
El Salvador's President Elias Antonio Saca will travel this coming week to Colombia to sign a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras
Some 1,700 indigenous people participated in a July 23-27 caravan to Bogota from Santander de Quilichao in the southwestern Colombian department of Cauca to demand peace, to call for popular unity and to oppose a "free trade" agreement (TLC, from its initials in Spanish) that the government of President Alvaro Uribe has signed with the US.
