ONIC Expresses Continued Concerns with the FTA
Below you will find the English translation of the letter that the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia (ONIC) recently sent President Obama and Members of the U.S. Congress highlighting their opposition to the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between Colombia and the U.S. under its’ present guidelines. ONIC’s position to the FTA is important to consider because this entity represents 102 indigenous peoples that recognize trade an essential element for development in the context of a globalized world. The ONIC is particularly concerned that the current guidelines of the FTA:
Dear Colleague,
Below you will find the English translation of the letter that the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia (ONIC) recently sent President Obama and Members of the U.S. Congress highlighting their opposition to the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between Colombia and the U.S. under its’ present guidelines. ONIC’s position to the FTA is important to consider because this entity represents 102 indigenous peoples that recognize trade an essential element for development in the context of a globalized world. The ONIC is particularly concerned that the current guidelines of the FTA:
* Violate the constitutionally guaranteed cultural rights of Colombia’s indigenous peoples.
* Promote increased expropriation of natural resources from indigenous territories without the consent of the communities, their leaders and authorities.
* Privatize and convert the knowledge of plant and animal life that indigenous persons have cultivated through millennia-old traditions into capital wealth.
* Promote internal displacement, water privatization, the use of transgenics, weaken labor rights and work conditions, and will lead to decreased living standards and health by further privatizing social services.
The ONIC calls on President Obama and Members of the U.S. Congress to change the present guidelines found in the Colombia- U.S. FTA and to construct new guidelines for a more just, mutually beneficial and environmentally sustainable agreement that upholds human rights and labor standards. We hope that you consider the concerns expressed by the indigenous peoples of Colombia when determining what steps need to be taken vis a vis the pending U.S.-Colombia FTA agreement.
For further information please contact WOLA at 202-797-2171.
Sincerely,
Gimena Sanchez
gsanchez@wola.org
Senior Associate on Colombia
Vicki Gass
vgass@wola.org
Senior Associate on Rights and Development
ORGANIZACIÓN NACIONAL INDIGENA DE COLOMBIA
ONIC
NIT.860.521.808-1
Bogota Colombia, June 2009
President Barack Obama
Members of the United States Congress,
Honorable President and distinguished Members of Congress, the purpose of this letter is to declare that the indigenous persons of Colombia, conscious of the global reality surrounding our nations in this competitive and complicated geopolitical atmosphere, identify the trade of tangible goods and services as an essential requirement for the demands and necessities of humanity. With this in mind, we celebrate that a descendant of a historically marginalized race, which pioneered the fight for civil, political, and cultural rights worldwide, now occupies the highest office in the United States of America.
In the same manner, we want to congratulate you for your practical interest in consolidating democracy by restructuring United States foreign policy. With this in mind, before the Congress and yourself, we would like to declare that the indigenous persons of Colombia are opposed to the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between Colombia and the United States because it holds, for us, strong implications with respect to our rights and the rights of Mother Earth. Examples of these implications include the imposition of a market for land and the subjection to supranational legislatures, private tribunals, financial interests, transnational business, large scale projects and foreign intervention in our territories.
The present guidelines of the FTA, international in scope, would have precedence over the constitutions and laws of the signing countries, thereby promoting the destruction of political pluralism in Colombia, and, as a result, violating our cultural diversity. Consequently, the rights guaranteed by the 1991 Constitution and by Agreement 169 of the International Labor Organization (ratified in Colombia through Law 21 of 1991) would be replaced by supranational legislation that would promote free trade policies. Additionally, the current guidelines would entail more excavation and exploitation of petroleum and carbon derivatives, oil palm plantations, and hydroelectric projects, among other ventures, in our territories without the consent of our communities, authorities or officers. These practices fall under the domestic agenda of promoting competitiveness and investment which violate the rights of indigenous persons.
The FTA presumes to privatize and convert the knowledge of plant and animal life that indigenous persons have cultivated through millennia-old traditions into capital wealth. Our traditions, and in this particular case our knowledge, would be subject to appropriation by foreigners who could patent it as their own intellectual property. As indigenous persons, we will once more be displaced from our own territories, forced to accept water privatization and the use of transgenics; be subjected to the degradation of labor rights and working conditions, the erosion of our living conditions and health through the further privatization of social services, the loss of many medium and small enterprises that will go out of business, further encroachment of civil society’s democratic rights, the increase of critical property and inequality, the destruction of our lasting ancestral culture and values, and the dismantling of the National States amidst their absorption as colonies within the commercial framework.
We are aware of the Colombian government’s efforts to campaign and lobby in your country, using the State’s resources to delude even our fellow indigenous brothers in favor of the FTA. We also know of the government’s policies to defame and criminalize the efforts of various social, labor, unionist, Afro-Colombian and indigenous organizations. Whenever these groups have raised concerns about the manner in which the FTA negotiations are taking place, they have been labeled as terrorists, underdeveloped, and traitors.
Therefore, we ask you, President Obama, the United States House of Representatives, and the Senate, to discard the present guidelines of the Colombian FTA. We ask you to start over and construct new guidelines for a just, mutually beneficial, and sustainable Agreement that is in accordance with human rights and labor concerns. We ask you to take into consideration the constitutional rights of Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities, Colombian peasants and workers and to establish a territorial and economic structure that will not exacerbate the internal armed conflict.
We hope for clear and strict guidelines that protect the environment and our ancestral practices, condition investment with human rights clauses, and guarantee the Colombian government’s protection of all of its citizens, especially Afro-Colombian and indigenous persons. We hope that a new and just FTA with Colombia becomes an example for the world and that it encourages the creation of new norms and standards in the Organization of American States (OAS) and the United Nations (UN) that guarantee that transnational corporations respect our right to prior consultation.
We appreciate your concerns, and cordially bid you farewell.
Indigenous Government Council
National Indigenous Organization of Colombia, ONIC
Bogotá, Colombia
CC: Members of the United States Congress