April 30, 2010
Afro-Colombian organizations report on US human rights violations
The Black Community Process -PCN and AFRODES USA submitted a report to the UN Human Rights Committee for the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of the United States compliance with international human rights standards, with the endorsement of organizations member of NASGACC, and other in solidarity with Afro-Colombian struggle.The Universal Periodic Review (UPR) is a very unique process, created in 2006 through the UN General Assemble, to review the human rights records of all 192 UN Member States once every four years. “The UPR is a State-driven process, under the auspices of the Human Rights Council, which provides the opportunity for each State to declare what actions they have taken to improve the human rights situations in their countries and to fulfill their human rights obligations.” (UNHRC). It is a mechanism that aims to remind States of their responsibilities with international human rights standards, address human rights violations and improve the human rights situation in all countries.
This is the first time that the United States will be evaluated in its human rights obligations. Several NGOs in the US submitted their reports on issues such labor and employment, gender, health, housing, immigration, political represion, international policies and others. Only the US Human Rights Network (USHRN) submitted a compilation of 24 reports.
The submission by PCN and AFRODES USA focused on the impact of the US policies Plan Colombia and Free Trade Agreement (FTA) on Afro-descendant economic, social and cultural rights. This is a unique opportunity for the Afro-descendant organizations to address the implications of the US policies toward Colombia in the serious violations of Afro-Colombian human rights, before the UN Humans Rights Council, make specific recommendations to modify such policies, and hold the country accountable for its failures on ensuring respect and implementation of those rights.
The UN’s first UPR of the US is schedule to take place on December 20th, 2010.
To read the complete report go to:
http://www.afrocolombians.com/pdfs/PCN-AFRODESUSAjointSubmission-US-April2010.pdf
For a USHRN summary of the reports go to: http://www.ushrnetwork.org/sites/default/files/_USHRN_Overarching_UPR_Report.pdf
Also find individual reports at: http://www.ushrnetwork.org/campaign_upr
September 17, 2009
NASGACC submitted comments to USTR regarding US-Colombia FTA
On July the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) issued notes inviting interested parties to make comments on the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement.NASGACC, the Network for Advocacy in Solidarity with Grassroots Afro-Colombian Communities, submitted a comprehensive document with comments that support the reasons why Afro-Colombian grassroots communities firmly oppose the Colombian FTA. The arguments in the document are centered in two key themes: a) the existence of structural racism in Colombia, combined with the ongoing armed conflict and the deep-seated inequalities it perpetuates, disproportionately affect African descendants in the country and continue a process of historical and contemporary exclusion that the Colombian government fails to adequately address; and b) despite the existence of international and national legal mechanisms determining that communities must be consulted and integrated into decision-making processes whenever political or administrative measures could potentially affect their cultural integrity, traditional authorities were never consulted in the process of crafting the FTA.
The document is endorsed by more than 100 Afro-Colombian grassroots organizations and Community Councils.
Find the complete document at http://www.afrocolombians.com/pdfs/FTACommentsFTA-NASGACC.pdf
Different groups and human rights organizations also send their comments:
http://www.wola.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=viewp&id=993&Itemid=2
http://usleap.org/files/2009-SepUSLEAPCommentsOnColombiaFTA.pdf
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/09/15/human-rights-watch-comments-office-us-trade-representative-concerning-us-colombia-fr
http://www.regulations.gov/search/Regs/home.html#submitComment?R=09000064809fd61d
June 25, 2009
Whisper in Obama's ear before President Uribe does
President Uribe will meet with President Obama next week on Monday, June 29 at the White House. It is for sure that the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement will be at the top of President Uribe's agenda. Human Rights organizations in Washington, DC are asking that you take action: ask President Obama to voice a clear and loud message to President Uribe about human rights protection. Stand up, SAY NO TO US-COLOMBIA FTA!To write directly to President Obama got to this links:
http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/5436/t/2467/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=1783
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/625/t/8560/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=1145&tag=LAWGalert2
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/625/t/8560/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=1145&tag=LAWGalert2
Let your voice be heard!
Go to the Rally:
Obama Meets Uribe
Emergency rally for human rights in Colombia
Monday, June 29, 12:30pm
North side of the White House
(On the sidewalk to the south of Lafayette Park)
Contact: 202-403-1752
Dear Mr. President Obama, We Want to Hear From You Clear and Loud that You Stand Up for Human Rights in Colombia
From: AFRODES USADear Friends and Collegaues,
Tell President Obama that the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement Undermines the Civil and Human Rights of Afro-Colombians.
This Monday June 29 Colombian President Alvaro Uribe will meet with President Obama to discuss US-Colombia relations at the White House. As it is their first official meeting, the top priority of President Uribes agenda will be the pending Free Trade Agreement (FTA) and US aid to Colombia. Urge President Obama to give President Uribe a clear message that human rights are a priority in the U.S. relations with Colombia. In particular, ask President Obama to express concern about the continued and systematic human rights abuses committed against the Afro-Colombian people.
Afro-Colombians are disproportionately affected by Colombias internal armed conflict and violence. A conflict that President Uribe and other high level officials deny exists! In recent years, Afro-Colombian leaders, families and communities have increasingly become targets of violence and death threats. Furthermore, aerial fumigations funded by the U.S. and combat operations have generated forced displacement of 380,000 in 2008 alone. President Obama must urge President Uribe to take bold steps to prevent further displacement from taking place and ensure that Afro-Colombian communities are not harmed.
President Uribe must hear loud and clear from President Obama that US-Colombia relations will only advance when Colombia shows a real commitment to protect the human rights of Afro-Colombians, curtails abuses committed against them, guarantees their territorial and cultural rights, respects their right to previous consultation on all development projects including the FTA and takes bold steps to combat racial discrimination.
Write to President Obama today and ask him to raise the following issues with President Uribe:
1. Ensure peace in Afro-Colombian territories. Colombia is asking for an FTA at a time when violence, impunity and inequality are disproportionately affecting Afro-Colombian and Indigenous Communities. Proper protection mechanisms must be put in place for these minorities to exert the right to life and not become internally displaced. Under current conditions an FTA would not benefit the majority of Afro-Colombians.
2. Colombia must respect land rights and return all illegally and violently usurped lands to their rightful owners. Internal displacement and violent expropriation of territories belonging to Afro-Colombians has gone on for far too long. Rather than protect the victims and ensure that their lands are returned the Colombian government has promoted legislation, policies and programs that undermine ethnic minorities land rights.
3. Colombia must comply with international standards that protect Afro-Colombian rights. The FTA Chapters on Environment, Intellectual Property and Investment were formulated and approved by Colombia without the Previous Consultation of Afro-Colombian and Indigenous Communities. The previous consultation mechanism is a basic right of the ethnic groups mandate by Decree 1320/98, Law 70/93, and ILO Convention 169. Under Uribes legislation later ruled unconstitutional for being in clear violation of ethnic minorities rights were passed. The record shows that Uribe is not respecting and guaranteeing these ethnic minorities land rights.
4. No bio-fuel projects should be implemented on Afro-Colombian collective lands, and the FTA should not provide resources for such projects to be implemented on Afro-Colombian collective territories. Large scale and infrastructural and economic projects such bio-fuels (oil palm and sugarcane), are linked in Colombia to land expropriation, exploitation, violence, environmental damage, and serious labor standard violations. Many Afro-Colombians are employed by the sugar cane industry which does not respect basic labor rights for its associative cooperative workers. Afro-Colombian grassroots communities have opposed the expansion of mono-cultural crops for years, yet Uribe insists on promoting such projects.
5. The Long Term Developmental Plan for Afro-Colombian, Raisal and Palenque Communities must get the technical and financial resources to be fully implemented. As per law 70 of the black communities, Afro-Colombian communities have formulated their own development projects and land management plans. Colombia has minimally funded such projects and instead imposed its own development plans that are highly problematic for the Afro-Colombian people. Its method of divide and conquer in order to push projects through has lead to divisions and conflict among the Afro-Colombian people and a weakening of the Afro-Colombian leadership.
You can use this document to draft your own letter.
White House e-mail: http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/
Phone Numbers: 202-456-1111 - FAX: 202-456-2461 - TTY/TDD: 202-456-6213
Please contact Charo Mina Rojas at charo@io.com or 434-760-0663 if you have any questions.
Thank you.
AFRODES USA
April 29, 2009
New Report: Panama FTA
April 29, 2009New Report: Panama FTA Would Undermine U.S. Efforts to Stop OffshoreTax-Haven Abuse and Regulate Risky Financial Conduct
Trade Deal Would Leave Tax Shelters for AIG and Narcotraffickers Intact While Removing Existing U.S. Tools to Combat Tax Evasion and Other Financial Crimes
WASHINGTON, D.C. President Obamas ability to deliver on his campaign commitments to close tax loopholes that promote offshoring and re-regulate the financial sector would be dealt a sharp blow if the U.S.-Panama Free Trade Agreement (FTA) is passed, according to a Public Citizen report released today.
The new report details how Panama explicitly created an industrial policy designed to create a comparative advantage in tax-evasion and money-laundering services for entities such as the bailed-out American International Group (AIG) and Mexican and Colombian narcotraffickers. The report also examines how specific FTA rules would remove key policy tools such as limitations on transfers from tax-haven countries that are used to combat financial crimes and would also conflict with U.S. government efforts to combat the global economic crisis by re-regulating finance.
Members of Congress wouldnt vote to let AIG not pay its taxes or to give Mexican drug lords a safe place to hide their proceeds from selling drugs to our kids, but thats in essence what the Panama FTA does, said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizens Global Trade Watch division. The Obama administration has discarded or altered many leftover Bush initiatives, so why would it push a Bush trade pact that directly conflicts with its priority campaign goals of closing tax loopholes and regulating finance?
The Panama deal, otiated by the Bush administration, is modeled on the controversial North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) template. It includes the controversial private investor-state enforcement system, which would give new powers to hundreds of thousands of private investors from around the world that are registered and have operations in Panama. This includes the right to challenge U.S. anti-tax haven policies and financial service regulations in foreign tribunals to demand taxpayer-funded compensation.
Among the key findings:
Some of the largest recipients of U.S. federal procurement contracts and money under the Troubled Asset Relief Program including Citigroup and AIG have a combined dozens of subsidiaries in Panama that would be empowered with expansive new rights if the FTA is implemented. These firms have been among the top advocates for the Panama FTA;
Panama is one of only 13 countries and the only current or prospective FTA partner that is listed on all of the major tax-haven watchdog lists that also does not have U.S. tax transparency treaties.
In the face of recent pressure to reform related to the G-20 Financial Crisis summit process, Panama wrote to the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) defiantly outlining its refusal to adopt key reforms, such as lifting the veil of secrecy on beneficial ownership of bank accounts and automatic exchange of tax information;
The April 2009 OECD tax-haven watch-list includes Panama among 30 countries that agreed to conform to international tax norms but failed to do so. Indeed, the OECD report notes that Panama made its commitment in 2002 and since has completed not a single agreement to implement its promise. In contrast, other countries on the list have completed as many as eight compliance agreements which is still not adequate to be taken off this list.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice and other entities, Panama is also a major financial conduit for Mexican and Colombian narcotraffickers money laundering activities;
According to the U.S. State Department, Panama has more than 350,000 foreign-registered companies, all of which face low to no taxes and regulation. This high rate of foreign incorporation Panama is reportedly second only to Hong Kong makes the country a magnet for tax evasion. According to a Panamanian law firms advertisement touting Panamas lax standards: Even Switzerland cooperates on income tax cases if the return is filed falsely like all income was not declared, things were omitted or so the complaining government says. Belize has tax treaties, as do most of the so-called tax havens. There is no better jurisdiction than Panama today!!!!!!!
At a time of massive public anger at Wall Street, the Panama FTA is the wrong handout for the wrong interests, said Todd Tucker, research director of Public Citizens Global Trade Watch division. President Obama campaigned on the need for a change in our trade policies and a crack-down on tax loopholes that promote offshoring, so implementing a Bush NAFTA-style trade agreement with one of the worlds major tax havens is pretty obviously not the way to go.
To remedy the tax-haven, banking-secrecy and money-laundering problems with the FTA outlined in this report, the Obama administration should renegotiate the pact to:
Eliminate the FTA provisions that ban limits on transfers, which would remove from the United States the key policy tool for acting against banking secrecy, tax-haven policies and money laundering;
Remove the investor-state enforcement system, which would allow hundreds of thousands of private investors from around the world that are registered and have operations in Panama to challenge U.S. anti-tax haven policies for cash compensation;
Remove the FTAs restrictions on financial regulations, including those that forbid limits on financial service firms size or establishment of firewalls between different financial service businesses, and add to FTAs financial services text a set of required minimum financial regulatory standards that signatories to the agreement would agree to adopt in domestic law and enforce that could be based on the re-regulation proposals now being formulated in multilateral and domestic forums; and
Require that the FTA be terminated if Panama fails to maintain the transparency standards outlined below, which should be passed before the FTA goes into effect. (As a related measure, the Obama administration should create an independent regulatory agency, perhaps along the lines of the Financial Product Safety Commission proposed by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and others, and authorize this body to perform regular evaluations of Panama's maintenance of these new standards. These evaluations would form the basis for the invocation of the FTA termination measure.)
The report additionally outlines a series of steps Panama must take domestically before any FTA with the country should even be considered. Among the top reforms are signing an automatic tax information exchange agreement with the United States, full disclosure of the beneficial ownership of corporations and other entities, and a ban on bearer shares (securities that allow the holder to conceal their identity).
This agreement is a throwback to a past era, as highlighted by the agreements expansive limits on financial service regulation. The pact was signed by President Bush in 2007 and clearly predates the bipartisan consensus created by the meltdown that better regulation of financial service is necessary for markets to work productively, said Wallach.
To read the report, go to http://www.citizen.org/documents/PanamaTaxEvasionReportApril2009-FINAL.pdf
Unions United In Colombia FTA Opposition
April 29, 2009Unions United In Colombia FTA Opposition, Split On
Handling Benchmarks
By, Erick Watson
In the wake of U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirks announcement this
week that he is stepping up work toward congressional passage of the
pending U.S. free trade agreements with Panama and Colombia, union
sources were united in their strong opposition to advancing deals they
see as examples of a failed Bush administration trade policy.
More http://www.afrocolombians.com/pdfs/UnionsUnitedInColombiaFTAOppositionBenchmarks.pdf
April 20, 2009
Letter from Afro-Colombian Grassroots Communities to President Barak Obama
http://www.afrocolombians.com/pdfs/LettertoObama-CCouncilsandorganizations-March209.pdfEn espaol: http://www.afrocolombians.com/pdfs/CartaaObama-Marzo2009-Spa.pdf
October 8, 2008
Colombian Sugar Cane Workers on Strike are Facing Violent Repression
Since September 15th, 18,000 Colombian sugar cane workers, most of them indigenous and Afro-Colombians, have been on strike in protest of the horrible labor conditions they face and to calling for basic minimum labor standards. Unfortunately, the response of the president Uribe's government has been repression and violence. Both government and industry have refused to negotiate with the workers, claiming their struggle is manipulated by the insurgency. Forty workers have been injured and human rights workers have been prevented from documenting the abuses.The sugar cane workers are employed under "associative cooperatives", a system promoted by the Uribes government, in which all labor rights are violated. Sugar cane workers don't have the right to be organize and unionize, so their strike is called "illegal". They are forced to work between 12 and 14 hours per day with no overtime compensation. They are not entitled to health insurance, workers compensation or retirement plan. Sugar cane worker make less than 40 cents an hour for a 14 hour day. Under the "associative cooperative" system, the sugar cane companies do not hold any responsibility as employers. Sugar cane workers are victims of a system of modern slavery, a disgraceful situation in a country already recognized as the most dangerous for ethnic groups, human rights workers and trade unionist, due to the scandalous rate of violations of human rights.
All this is happening right when the President Uribe spent large sums of money on lobbyist in a last-ditch effort to convince the U.S. Congress to approve the Free Trade Agreement, under the guise of his progress on human rights and trade unionist protection. The situation of the sugar cane workers exemplifies the many reason the FTA must not be approved.
Please take action now. Send a letter or call to your members of Congress and the Department of State, urging them to encourage the Colombian government to respect the sugar cane workers and attend their complain. Also urge your members of the Congress to oppose to FTA.
You can find a form or take direct action at http://action.citizen.org/t/1153/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=26049
Sample script to call your members of the Congress:
Ask for the foreign policy aide:
I am calling to bring your attention to the grave situation of 18,000 sugarcane workers in Colombia who have been on strike since September 15 in protest of the poor labor conditions they face due to the Colombian Governments promotion of the associative cooperative system. Workers, many of whom are Afro-Colombian, are forced to work 12-14 hour days in a dangerous environment for approximately $200 per month and without any job security.
I ask that Representative (insert name) please take action by:
-Contacting President Alvaro Uribe at (571) 562-9300 ext. 3550 and urge him to guarantee the protection of the sugarcane workers and to the sugarcane industry to promptly negotiate with the workers.
-Contacting the State Department and urging them to get the U.S. Embassy to closely monitor this situation.
I also ask that Representative (insert name) to NOT support the FTA with Colombia.
Sample Script for Jennie Muoz and Susan Sanford at the DOS:
Hello, my name is ___and I am from ___organization. I am calling to express my concern regarding the grave situation of 18,000 sugarcane workers in Colombia who have been on strike since September 15 in protest of their poor labor conditions.
Considering the interest that the State Department has on labor rights given the proposed US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement, we ask that you urge the Colombian Government to refrain from using force against these workers and to encourage the sugarcane industry to promptly negotiate with these workers.
If you have any questions please call or e-mail ___at ___.
Lear more about the sugar cane workers struggle:
Colombia, Sugar cane workers threatened http://www.ww4report.com/node/6033
http://citizen.typepad.com/eyesontrade/2008/10/uribe-governmen.html
http://wolablog.typepad.com/weblog/2008/09/not-so-sweet-striking-sugar-cane-workers-in-colombia-under-attack.html
For more information please contact Charo Mina Rojas (434) 760-0663