Just Foreign Policy News
September 8, 2011
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I) Actions and Featured Articles
Jobs Plan? End the Wars, Save 400,000 Jobs
Here’s how the President can save more than 400,000 jobs without spending a dime: bring home the troops from Iraq and Afghanistan as scheduled, instead of cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits.
http://www.truth-out.org/jobs-plan-end-wars-save-400000-jobs/1315495268
*Action: Urge Your Rep. to Co-sponsor the Iraq Accountability Act
The Administration is trying to keep thousands of U.S. troops in Iraq indefinitely. Bipartisan legislation would prohibit this. Urge your Rep to co-sponsor.
https://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/obamaextendsbushwar
Current list of co-sponsors:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:HR02757:@@@P
*Action: Tell Congress: $200 Billion In "Real Savings" If We End the Wars "On Time"
Many Americans don’t realize that the Super Committee can reach 1/6 of its debt reduction goal just by withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq and Afghanistan when we said we were going to. Urge your representatives in Congress to make this part of any debt reduction deal.
https://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/endwarsontime
Mark Weisbrot: International Community Fails Haiti Yet Again -This Time With A Cholera Epidemic
The UN is spending annually nine times what it has raised for the cholera epidemic on its unwanted military occupation of Haiti – a military occupation that caused the cholera outbreak in the first place.
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/09/201198104531717105.html
Robert Greenwald: The Kochs’ Keystone clique exposed
The Koch brothers’ club of billionaires and political cronies will profit if the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline goes ahead
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/sep/08/koch-brothers-keystone-clique-exposed
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II) Summary:
U.S./Top News
1) Foreign ministers and defense chiefs from Latin American countries that have more than 12,000 troops in Haiti called a meeting Thursday to consider how the alleged sex abuse of a Haitian teenager by Uruguayan sailors might affect the future of the U.N. troops, AP reports. Brazil has made public its wish to reduce its forces ahead of an eventual withdrawal, and Uruguayan President Jose Mujica seconded that idea. Some Haitians see the UN troops as an occupying force that has done little to ameliorate the country’s misery, AP notes. In 2007, almost a tenth of its Sri Lankan battalion was recalled because of a sex-abuse scandal. Last year, a contingent from Nepal was blamed for introducing cholera to Haiti, which caused an outbreak that has killed more than 6,200 people.
2) African women at a refugee camp in Janzour, Libya say Libyan rebels routinely attack the camp and abduct women to rape them, McClatchy reports.
3) A cholera outbreak has killed more than 6,000 people in Haiti since October and is far from under control, says the New York Times in an editorial. Access to proper treatment would dramatically reduce the mortality rate.
4) Palestinians on Thursday officially launched their campaign to join the UN as a full member state, AP reports. The campaign will include a series of peaceful events "in various international cities and capitals" leading up to the Sept. 21 opening of the General Assembly. Two days later, Palestinian President Abbas will address the gathering in New York and ask for admission to the UN.
5) This week, hundreds of Haitians protested in support of an 18-year-old who said he was sexually assaulted by peacekeepers from Uruguay on a UN base, the New York Times reports. Human rights experts and some member states fault the UN for leaving too much of the job of enforcing its "zero tolerance" policy towards sexual abuse by UN troops to the countries contributing troops. The State Department’s 2010 report on human trafficking criticized the UN, saying, "No comprehensive information is available on the number of cases of disciplinary action." The movie "The Whistleblower," a fictionalized account of real events in Bosnia, has drawn attention to the issue.
6) U.S. measures to reduce teenage smoking violate World Trade Organization rules, according to a panel ruling released last week, Public Citizen reports. Indonesia successfully argued that the U.S. Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act of 2009 violated WTO rules. The FSPTCA banned many forms of flavored cigarettes. There is substantial evidence that tobacco companies market these cigarettes as "starter" or "trainer" cigarettes in order to hook teenagers. But Indonesia successfully argued that, since its exporters are the primary providers of clove cigarettes to the U.S. market, the FSPTCA constituted de facto discrimination, in violation of WTO rules under the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade. The WTO panel accepted this argument, despite the fact that the FSPTCA was totally non-discriminatory and many U.S. cigarette makers (such as those that make cola-flavored cigarettes) were also blocked from making these harmful products.
Bahrain
7) Human rights groups and a Bahraini labor confederation say thousands of Shiite Bahrainis have been "purged" from their jobs as part of the government’s crackdown on dissent, AP reports. The AFL-CIO has asked U.S. officials to suspend a five-year-old trade accord with Bahrain in retaliation for the mass job dismissals and the firing of union leaders.
Colombia
8) The Washington Office on Latin America says passage of the U.S.- Colombia trade agreement will intensify labor abuses in Buenaventura, Colombia’s most important Pacific port city, according to Colombia Reports. Gimena Sanchez-Garzoli of WOLA says that although the Obama-Santos Labor Action Plan agreement bans "associative labor cooperatives" that allow workers to be hired without offering them contracts or benefits, to be represented by a union, or to be paid the national minimum wage, the labor cooperatives simply changed their names and continue to operate.
Guatemala
9) Guatemala’s economy minister says he is confident Guatemala will defeat a U.S. challenge to its record on labor rights, Reuters reports. The US said last month it wanted a dispute settlement panel to hear its complaint Guatemala has failed to protect workers’ rights as required under the Dominican Republic-Central American Free Trade Agreement.
Contents:
U.S./Top News
1) UN peacekeeping nations consider Haiti abuse case
Raul O. Garces, Associated Press, September 8, 2011
http://news.yahoo.com/un-peacekeeping-nations-consider-haiti-abuse-case-060038672.html
Montevideo, Uruguay- Foreign ministers and defense chiefs from the Latin American countries that have more than 12,000 peacekeepers in Haiti called a meeting Thursday to consider how the alleged sex abuse of a Haitian teenager by Uruguayan sailors might affect the future of the U.N. mission.
Brazil has made public its wish to reduce its forces ahead of an eventual withdrawal, and Uruguayan President Jose Mujica seconded that idea ahead of the meeting in Montevideo. "We are not in Haiti to retire there," Mujica said Wednesday after he offered apologies to the people of Haiti over the alleged sex abuse case.
[…] The incident became public last week after several Haitians spotted a sailor’s cellphone video showing the man being held face-down inside a U.N. base at Port-Salut as laughing peacekeepers threatened to rape him. A spokesman for the Uruguayan defense ministry was reprimanded for dismissing the event as a "bad joke."
[…] Mujica said Wednesday that "between soldiers there’s always a certain amount of horseplay; it’s inevitable." But he added that the point of view of both sides in such incidents must be taken into account, in particular "the weakest," meaning the Haitian.
Martelly condemned the alleged assault of the young Haitian as an "act that revolts the national conscience."
[…] But some Haitians see the world body as an occupying force that has done little to ameliorate the country’s misery. In 2007, almost a tenth of its Sri Lankan battalion was recalled because of a sex-abuse scandal. Last year, a contingent from Nepal was blamed for introducing cholera to Haiti, which caused an outbreak that has killed more than 6,200 people and sickened another 439,000, according to Haiti’s health ministry.
[…]
2) African women say rebels raped them in Libyan camp
David Enders, McClatchy Newspapers, September 08, 2011 11:56:37 AM
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/09/07/123403/african-women-say-rebels-raped.html
Janzour, Libya – When the sun sets on the refugee camp for black Africans that has sprung up at the marina in this town six miles west of Tripoli, the women here brace for the worst.
The rebels who ring the camp suddenly open fire. Then they race into the camp, shouting "gabbour, gabbour" – Arabic for whore – and haul away young women, residents say.
"You should be here in the evening, when they come in firing their guns and taking people," one woman from Nigeria said Wednesday as she recounted the nightly raids on the camp. "They don’t use condoms, they use whatever they can find," she said, pointing to a discarded plastic bag in a pile of trash.
As she spoke, other women standing nearby nodded in agreement.
There is no way to know how many women have been raped here, where hundreds of Africans have settled in and around the boats of a marina. No one keeps statistics in the camp, and foreign aid workers say they are prohibited from discussing the allegations on the record. International Red Cross representatives say only that they have spoken to rebel leaders about "security concerns."
[…] Hundreds of black Africans have been swept up and are being held in makeshift prisons awaiting some sort of judicial finding of whether they were mercenaries or not. Thousands more are trapped in refugee camps. They can’t leave the camps, they say, for fear they’ll be targeted on the streets. They do not feel safe inside the camps, either.
Human rights advocates have decried what appears to be mistreatment of black African workers, and U.S. Ambassador Gene Cretz, speaking in Washington on Wednesday, admitted it’s a growing problem.
[…] Cretz said the rebels’ National Transitional Council is working with the United Nations and other international relief organizations to ease the situation.
There was little evidence of such efforts at the marina here, however. At the nearby headquarters of the revolutionary forces in the area, Mohammed Abdullah Fatouri, the head of the military council, said that he was unaware of any problems in the camp.
[…]
3) Haiti’s Needless Cholera Deaths
Haiti’s Needless Cholera Deaths, Editorial, New York Times, September 6, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/07/opinion/haitis-needless-cholera-deaths.html
A cholera outbreak has killed more than 6,000 people in Haiti since October and is far from under control. More than 420,000 people have been sickened since the disease emerged in a rural area north of Port-au-Prince, apparently after sewage from an encampment of United Nations peacekeepers contaminated the Artibonite River.
Cholera is preventable and easily treated, but containment has been stymied by the chronic deficiency – or utter absence – of clean water and sanitation systems in Haiti, particularly in the countryside, where cholera hit first and hardest. The cholera mortality rate in Haiti’s vulnerable Southeast region was 5.3 percent in July. Access to proper treatment could keep that rate below 1 percent.
[…]
4) Palestinians officially launch campaign to join United Nations as full member state
Associated Press, Thursday, September 8, 4:58 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle-east/palestinians-say-american-pressure-has-failed-to-deter-un-independence-bid/2011/09/07/gIQAKxbL9J_story.html
Ramallah, West Bank – The Palestinians on Thursday officially launched their campaign to join the United Nations as a full member state, saying they would stage a series of peaceful events in the run-up to the annual gathering of the U.N. General Assembly later this month.
Some 100 Palestinian officials and activists gathered at the U.N. offices in Ramallah for a short ceremony, where they announced their plans in a letter addressed to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
The letter urges Ban to add his "moral voice in support of the Palestinian people."
"Families of the tens of thousands of victims of Israeli occupation, including those martyred, wounded and imprisoned, and countless others who were expelled from their homes or lost their homes and their property, hope that you will exert all possible efforts toward the achievement of the Palestinian people’s just demands," it says.
The letter was handed over by Latifa Abu Hmeid, a 70-year-old woman who lost one son in fighting with Israel and has seven other sons in Israeli prisons because of alleged militant activities.
Officials said Abu Hmeid was selected to deliver the document because her personal story reflects the plight of the Palestinians. A resident of a West Bank refugee camp, her house has been twice demolished by Israeli authorities as punishment for her sons’ activities, they said.
The Palestinians have decided to turn to the U.N. to recognize their independence after two decades of unsuccessful peace efforts with Israel. The latest round of talks broke down a year ago.
The campaign seeks recognition of an independent Palestine in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem – areas captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war. Israel rejects a return to its 1967 lines.
[…] The letter says the campaign will include a series of peaceful events "in various international cities and capitals" leading up to the Sept. 21 opening of the General Assembly. Two days later, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will address the gathering in New York and ask for admission to the United Nations.
[…]
5) Peacekeepers’ Sex Scandals Linger, on Screen and Off
Neil MacFarquhar, New York Times, September 7, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/08/world/08nations.html
United Nations – On screen, two senior United Nations officials in Bosnia are arguing about firing Kathy Bolkovac, an American police officer battling to stop peacekeepers from both trafficking in young women and frequenting the brothels where they became indentured prostitutes.
"It is a point of honor for me that the U.N. is not remembered for raping the very people we must protect," says Madeleine Rees, a spirited human rights advocate played by Vanessa Redgrave. "Those girls are whores of war," growls the male bureaucrat heading the United Nations mission. "It happens; I will not dictate for morality."
Ms. Rees, the director of the human rights office in Sarajevo from 1998 to 2006, said that dispute in the movie "The Whistleblower," recently released in the United States, was lifted almost verbatim from a running argument she had around 2001.
A decade later, a string of sex scandals from Bosnia to the Democratic Republic of Congo to Haiti involving peacekeeping missions has forced the United Nations to change the way it handles accusations of trafficking, rape and related crimes. But the issue still bedevils the institution – a point underscored by the skirmishing among senior United Nations officials over whether to embrace the movie or try to ignore it.
The issue has certainly not gone away. This week, hundreds of Haitians protested in support of an 18-year-old who said he was sexually assaulted by peacekeepers from Uruguay on a United Nations base, eliciting a furious rebuke from Haiti’s president and an apology from Uruguay.
The United Nations has focused serious attention on addressing sexual crimes among the more than 120,000 personnel it has deployed in 16 peacekeeping missions globally, including widespread training. But the question that diplomats, advocates and even some United Nations officials ask is why the efforts still lag in terms of investigating accusations and, most important, making sure those who send troops and contractors abroad hold them accountable.
Human rights experts and some member states fault the United Nations for leaving too much of the job of enforcing its "zero tolerance" policy announced in 2003 to the countries contributing troops. Individual cases and any disciplinary action are rarely made public. "They never come up with actual facts; they never come up with actual cases," Ms. Bolkovac said.
She won a wrongful dismissal case in 2003 against a subsidiary of Virginia-based DynCorp International, which was contracted by the State Department to provide police officers for the United Nations peacekeeping force in Bosnia. But Ms. Bolkovac says she has never been hired by another peacekeeping mission. (DynCorp issued a statement noting that "The Whistleblower" was a work of fiction and that new owners had since enacted their own zero tolerance policy.)
United Nations officials brandish the statistics published on the organization’s peacekeeping Web site as evidence of transparency. The numbers, whose source is somewhat vague, indicate that cases dropped from 108 substantiated accusations of sexual exploitation and abuse in 2007 to 85 in 2008, then to 63 in 2009, 33 last year and just 5 so far in 2011.
But more than 200 such accusations remain unresolved, and the United Nations annual report on such crimes for 2010 noted that sexual activity with minors and nonconsensual sex represented more than half of reported accusations, little changed since 2008. Cases have come to light where peacekeepers paid children $1 or with candy to make a rape seem like prostitution.
Finally, efforts to gather information from troop contributors about legal or disciplinary action are often ignored. The United Nations got answers roughly a quarter of the time, or 88 responses from 333 queries sent, since 2007, according to its figures.
Senior officials defend the numbers as improving, and argue that publicly shaming member states would make finding peacekeeping troops more difficult. "Going into a blame and shame approach is counterproductive because this requires a mind-set change," said Susanna Malcorra, head of the logistics end of peacekeeping.
Activists and some diplomats condemn the United Nations as timid, with internal policing particularly weak under Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. Mr. Ban waged an extended feud over hiring with the head of internal oversight before she left in 2010, leaving dozens of investigator jobs empty. Senior officials admit that its investigators have the mandate to do more to track sexual abuse cases.
The United Nations pays $1,024 a month per soldier, making peacekeeping a profitable venture for many poorer nations. In June, member states voted themselves a bonus of roughly $100 per soldier per month, costing $85 million, for the coming year. The United Nations lost an opportunity by not hinging the bonuses on better cooperation, advocates contend.
"Member states are not reliable enough to do a good job on their own, especially in the early stages of a military investigation," said Prince Zeid Raad Zeid al-Hussein, the Jordanian ambassador and the author of a damning study of sexual exploitation in peacekeeping in 2005 as special adviser on the issue under the previous secretary general. Mr. Ban never filled the post.
Member states rejected the study’s recommendations to establish a coordinated, nimble investigation and discipline process. Soldiers serving the United Nations are subject to their own countries’ military justice. The only wrist slap often faced by contractors is being sent home, because they enjoy immunity as United Nations employees.
Soldiers linked to crimes are often repatriated. In April, 16 peacekeepers from Benin were sent home from Ivory Coast – more than a year after Save the Children U.K. found that the soldiers traded food for sex with poor, underage girls. More than 100 troops from Sri Lanka were sent home from Haiti in 2007 because of widespread accusations of sex with minors.
In many cases, however, the final outcome remains a mystery.
"The U.N. is not even a player in the investigation, doesn’t know the evidence and has no way to follow up with the way the military decides to deal with this issue," Prince Zeid said. "We, the member states, have by and large failed to do what I had hoped we would do."
The State Department’s 2010 report on human trafficking criticized the United Nations, saying, "No comprehensive information is available on the number of cases of disciplinary action."
[…]
6) U.S. measures to reduce teenage smoking deemed WTO violation
Todd Tucker, Public Citizen, September 06, 2011
http://citizen.typepad.com/eyesontrade/2011/09/wto-opens-door-to-teen-tobacco-addiction.html
U.S. measures to reduce teenage smoking violate World Trade Organization (WTO) rules, according to a panel ruling released late last week. Indonesia successfully argued that the U.S. Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act (FSPTCA) of 2009 violated WTO rules. The ruling opens the door to more teenage tobacco addiction, while further imperiling the legitimacy of a WTO that rules against environmental, health and other national policies 90 percent of the time.
The FSPTCA took a series of unprecedented and bold measures to combat teenage smoking, including the banning of many forms of flavored cigarettes. There is substantial evidence that tobacco companies produce and market these cigarettes as "starter" or "trainer" cigarettes in order to hook teenagers into a lifetime of nicotine addiction.
However, as the U.S. noted in its defense in the WTO case, the U.S. did not ban all types of cigarettes. In particular, regular tobacco and menthol cigarettes were excluded from the ban. The justification for these exclusions was that, unlike candy flavored or clove cigarettes, large numbers of adults are also hooked on regular and menthol cigarettes. To abruptly pull these products out of the market could cause a strain on the U.S. healthcare system (as lifetime addicts would instantly seek medical treatment for wrenching withdrawal symptoms) and might lead to a rise in illicit black market sales and associated crime. Nonetheless, various studies were ordered on the feasibility of banning menthol cigarettes in the future.
The FSPTCA banned candy and clove cigarettes regardless of where they were produced or who produced them. But Indonesia successfully argued that, since its exporters are the primary providers of clove cigarettes to the U.S. market, the FSPTCA constituted de facto discrimination, in violation of WTO rules under the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT). The WTO panel accepted this argument, despite the fact that the FSPTCA was totally non-discriminatory and many U.S. cigarette makers (such as those that make cola-flavored cigarettes) were also blocked from making these harmful products.
[…]
Bahrain
7) Jobless in Bahrain: Workplace purges still stoke protest anger
Associated Press, Thursday, September 8, 10:29 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle-east/jobless-in-bahrain-workplace-purges-still-stoke-protest-anger/2011/09/08/gIQAsq0JCK_story.html
Dubai, United Arab Emirates – One afternoon in May, police in Bahrain led away security guard Mahdi Ali from his job at the Gulf kingdom’s state-controlled aluminum plant. He claims he was blindfolded and beaten so severely that the bruises still have not healed.
His only offense, he insists, is being part of Bahrain’s Shiite majority as it presses for greater rights from Sunni rulers who have Western allies and powerful Gulf neighbors on their side.
The 44-year-old Ali now counts himself among Bahrain’s purged: Hundreds of Shiites – some say thousands – dismissed from jobs or suspended from universities for suspected support for demonstrators.
"My only crime is being Shiite," said Ali, who claims he has been effectively blacklisted from finding a new job. "I’ve paid for it by being dismissed, arrested, tortured and insulted."
With Bahrain’s Arab Spring crisis moving into its eighth month, the mass dismissals remain a major point of anger feeding near-daily street clashes on the strategic island – which is home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet.
The coming weeks could be critical in assessing the chances for any significant reconciliation efforts in Bahrain. The alternative is an increasingly divided and volatile nation where the region’s biggest political narratives intersect: Western security interests, Gulf Arab worries about spillover uprisings and Iran’s ambitions to cast wider Middle East influence.
"Bahrain had these tensions long before the current Arab upheavals. And it may end up as one of the most enduring and most complex dilemmas after the Arab Spring has run its course," said Sami Alfaraj, director of the Kuwait Center for Strategic Studies.
Shiites account for about 70 percent of the population of some 525,000 people, but claim they face systematic discrimination by the 200-year-old Sunni dynasty. Bahrain’s rulers, meanwhile, court Western and Sunni Arab backing by raising fears that Shiite power Iran is pulling the strings of the protests as a foothold to undermine other Gulf monarchs and sheiks.
Bahrain’s Shiite groups have pledged to boycott elections Sept. 24 to fill 18 parliament seats left vacant since Shiite lawmakers walked out in March to protest the government’s crackdowns. A fresh wave of protests could be timed to try to overshadow the voting and embarrass officials.
There already are signs of escalating violence after months of low-level skirmishes.
Security forces used tear gas, rubber bullets and bird shot early Thursday to break up crowds gathered to welcome doctors freed from prison after staging a hunger strike. "Down, down Hamad," chanted crowds in reference to Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa as they waited for some of the doctors, who still face charges of aiding the protests.
The broadest aim of the protests is to break the monarchy’s monopoly on power and open room for Shiites in top government and security posts. But the smaller battles – such as the job and university purges – have often become the focus of outrage by protesters and denunciations from rights groups.
"We are calling for our forgotten civil rights," said Sayed Ahmad, spokesman for a committee formed by activists to aid workers claiming they were pushed out of their jobs. "We don’t want to fight Sunnis, but we will stand up against anyone … trying to cleanse a sect just because of their political views."
Ahmad estimates close to 4,000 Shiite workers have lost their jobs since the protests began in February – many fired for missing work either to join the demonstrations or because they were too nervous to venture out during clashes that have left at least 33 people dead.
Bahrain’s biggest labor group, the General Federation of Bahrain Trade Unions, put the figure at about 2,500, but no definitive numbers are available and it’s unclear whether all dismissals were protest related.
[…] A statement by New York-based Human Rights Watch in July called on Bahraini authorities to investigate the dismissals of more than 2,000 workers "apparently as punishment" for backing the protests or following labor union appeals for sympathy strikes.
In Washington, the powerful AFL-CIO labor group has asked U.S. officials to suspend a five-year-old free trade accord with Bahrain in retaliation for the mass job dismissals and the firing of union leaders. The pact is just one of 17 such bilateral trade agreements with Washington, which also includes Israel, Jordan and Oman in the Middle East.
[…]
Colombia
8) Buenaventura will suffer from US-Colombia trade deal: NGO
Travis Mannon, Colombia Reports, Wednesday, 07 September 2011 18:09
http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/18845-buenaventura-will-suffer-from-us-colombia-fta-ngo.html
The people of Buenaventura, Colombia’s most important Pacific port city, will most likely suffer from the passage of the free trade agreement (FTA) between the United States and Colombia, according to a human rights NGO.
A Senior Associate for Colombia from the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), Gimena Sanchez-Garzoli, explained that passing the FTA would have devastating effects on the port city. "The FTA may only exacerbate the inequality and poverty in Colombian municipalities like Buenaventura," said Sanchez.
Sanchez told Colombia Reports that the FTA will "help consolidate a labor structure that is already in place that doesn’t allow people to freely associate and unionize."
According to the human rights activist, the Colombian Port Authority was privatized in 1994 and replaced by the Regional Port Society of Buenaventura. The private port authority hires workers from individual contractors and associative labor cooperatives (CTA), which allow them to hire workers without offering them contracts or benefits.
While the new private company helped to expand and increase commerce in the ports, it also crushed its employees’ ability to unionize and demand fair wages and working conditions.
"A dockworker, if lucky, could earn between $170 and $226 every two weeks. Most earn about $113, which does not meet the national minimal wage requirements," Sanchez explained.
The Labor Action Plan, a prerequisite agreement between U.S. President Barack Obama and Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, was passed in response to critics of the FTA in an attempt to improve the human rights and labor conditions in Colombia. Sanchez asserted that although the Labor Action Plan forced the Colombian government to ban CTAs, the labor cooperatives simply changed their names and continue to operate.
"Colombia may always have the best laws in the world but when it comes to implementing and enforcing, there are serious issues. There is tremendous impunity, there is still very weak institutions, and there is a general lack of political will to really implement these [changes]," Sanchez maintained.
Sanchez also explained that the FTA would "embolden" illegal armed groups who extort legitimate businesses in exchange for "security" and the safe passage of products. Increasing commerce and trade in these areas would give more opportunities to the illegal armed groups who already ravage port communities.
Sanchez believes that Buenaventura is especially susceptible because of the population’s Afro-Colombian heritage, which she feels makes the population invisible to the government because of racial discrimination.
[…]
Guatemala
9) Guatemala says it will win U.S. labor challenge
Rod Nickel, Reuters, Wed Sep 7, 2011 4:24pm EDT
http://ca.reuters.com/article/topNews/idCATRE7866PN20110907
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan – Guatemala is confident it will defeat a U.S. challenge to its record on labor rights, the country’s economy minister said on Wednesday, and he linked the challenge to White House efforts to win domestic support for several free trade deals.
The United States said last month it wanted a free-trade dispute settlement panel to hear its year-old complaint that Guatemala has failed to protect workers’ rights as required under the Dominican Republic-Central American Free Trade Agreement, known as CAFTA-DR, to which the United States is a signatory.
"We respect the law, the work law, the unions and there is no background for the claims – no basis for it," Economy Minister Luis Velasquez told Reuters in an interview. "We think the United States is going to lose."
[…] In a complaint first filed in 2008, the U.S. AFL-CIO labor federation and six Guatemalan unions accused the Guatemalan government of failing to enforce laws guaranteeing workers the right to organize and bargain collectively, as well as the right of association and acceptable conditions of work.
[…]
–
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