As the US Congress considers whether to ratify a free trade agreement with Colombia put forward by the Obama Administration, Colombian and other activists based in the US have put out an urgent call for such ratification to be refused.

NGOs are urging members of Congress to oppose ratification of the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA), saying that the agreement fails to recognize the serious human rights concerns around labor and the treatment of Colombia's Afro-Colombian and indigenous populations.

The US Congress should most definitely refuse to ratify this agreement with the Colombian government.  The US government admits itself that there are serious human rights problems in Colombia – including the fact that workers receive death threats on a daily basis and many are killed by armed groups, with no one held accountable. Furthermore, under Colombia's draconian labor laws, only about 1 percent of Colombian workers are covered by a labor agreement.

The FTA was initially signed under President Bush and then-Colombian President Uribe on November 26, 2006, during a scandal that implicated more than a third of Colombia’s Congress with directly supporting paramilitary groups responsible for crimes against humanity, including violently displacing people in order to acquire valuable land.

The FTA was never ratified by U.S. Congress due to human rights concerns, but following ongoing Colombian lobbying to have the pact approved, the Obama Administration finally submitted it to Congress for final approval.

If this pact is ratified by the US Congress, it will have devastating consequences for Colombian workers and for Afro-descendent communities in Colombia.  It will also undermine the Obama Administration’s claim to be concerned about human rights in the region.

Additional Facts:

- Colombia has the largest internally displaced population in the world. The ongoing internal armed conflict in Colombia has caused more than five million Colombians to abandon about 6.6 million hectares of land since 1980.

- Colombia is the most dangerous country in the world for trade unionists, with 51 unionists murdered in 2010 alone. Only 6 percent of investigations into the cases of murdered unionists since 1986 have reached a conviction - a 94 percent impunity rate for the perpetrators.

- If the US-Colombia FTA is ratified by the US Congress, nearly 400,000 small farmers would lose between 48 and 70 percent of their income. The FTA could also contradict U.S. counter-narcotics efforts in the country by pushing small farmers to cultivate coca, a far more lucrative crop, in order to survive. This would undermine development programs the US has invested in for more than a decade.

- On September 15, 2010, the US State Department announced that they had certified that Colombia was meeting the human rights conditions required for receipt of military aid in the face of abundant evidence that human rights violations by security forces were continuing with impunity.

- The Colombian government has dramatically failed to meet its obligations to protect human rights defenders. In the past six months, threats against Afro-Colombian and other community groups have increased, and the few investigations into these threats have yielded no results.

Charo Mina Rojas is available for print and broadcast interviews.

Please contact: [email protected] or US mobile tel: 434-760-0663.

Links for addition reading:

A recent statement issued by the Black Communities' Process in Colombia (PCN) on the Labor Action Plan agreed between Obama and Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos: 

http://www.afrocolombians.com/pdfs/PCNPressRelease-FTA-English4-12.pdf

From AfroColombians.com: Facts regarding the impact of FTA on small farmers, Afro-Colombian territorial rights and jobs in the US: 

http://www.afrocolombians.com/pdfs/ColombiaFTAFactsheet.pdf

From the FogCityJournal.com: Congress Should Reject US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement

http://www.fogcityjournal.com/wordpress/2876/congress-should-reject-us-colombia-free-trade-agreement/

From OxfamAmerica.com: US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement Bad Deal for Development and National Security

http://www.oxfamamerica.org/press/pressreleases/us-colombia-free-trade-agreement-bad-deal-for-development-and-national-security/?searchterm=None

BlackCommentator.com Guest Commentator, Charo Mina Rojas is the National Coordinator of Advocacy and Outreach of the Black Communities’ Process (Proceso de Comunidades Negras-PCN), and member of the Afro-Colombia Solidarity Network (ACSN), based in the US. Ms. Rojas worked for more than 15 years with organizations in Colombia on education and sustainable development projects for Afro-descendant communities. In 1995, she worked in Colombia's Ministry of Education as an adviser on the implementation of educational projects for Afro-Colombian communities.