Ligia Alzate, a high school principal in Medellin, Colombia, is an official of the teachers' union and a vocal opponent of the Colombian Free Trade Agreement.

Colombian unions call the toothless side agreement proposed to protect their labor rights a fig leaf solely "intended to ensure ratification."  Union leaders in South Korea have also been arrested repeatedly and imprisoned.  But there are no protections proposed at all for workers in South Korea or Panama. 
    Caterpiller Corp., however, calls Colombia "a good place to conduct business."  TechAmerica, which lobbies for Silicon Valley firms, says the Colombia FTA "will give U.S. tech companies a competitive edge ... while strengthening free markets, enhancing stability, and fostering democracy."
       Higher profits and a "competitive edge" don't ensure companies will keep jobs here.  EPI's founder Jeff Faux says, "As companies become multinational, whether they produce in America is irrelevant to their investors and top managers ... Rather, these agreements provide global corporations with the opportunity to outsource production for the U.S. market."
    Workers and unions in the U.S., Colombia and South Korea all agree.  The AFL-CIO's Rich Trumka says, "We need to be creating jobs-not passing agreements that will offshore more jobs."
"We do not need a NAFTA-style FTA," adds the Korean unions, calling it "harmful not only for the Korean workers and working families, but for the workers and working families in the U.S. as well."  Colombian unions "call on the U.S. Congress not to approve the agreement."       Congress should listen.  Free trade treaties that throw more workers on the streets, undermine labor rights and lead to forced migration, are political suicide for Democrats especially.  Democratic candidates will need and look for workers' votes next year.  Regardless of promises about a stimulus or a new jobs bill, working families will not forget how they voted on these job-killing treaties. 

The widow of a rural land rights activist weeps in recounting his assassination by a right-wing paramilitary organization linked to the Colombian government.  Land reform advocates fear the Colombian Free Trade Agreement will lead to the displacement of farmers by the dumping of agricultural products from the U.S., and the seizure of their land.

The Center for Economic and Social Rights, the Center of Concern, CIVICUS, DAWN, IBASE and Social Watch prepared a statement to urge G20 leaders ensure the centrality of human rights norms and principles in their decision-making on financial regulation and climate change during their upcoming Summit in Cannes, France. These civil society organizations called others to endorse the statement before Monday. Large-scale deprivations of human rights stemming from the financial and economic crises are not inevitable, natural phenomena, wrote the representatives of signatories.

According to them, the G20 agenda in Cannes provides a unique opportunity for governments —individually and in concert with one another— to choose alternative, human rights-centered paths to a sustainable, resilient and above all just global economy.  The document, titled Joint Civil Society Statement to the Group of 20 Leaders on Embedding Human Rights in Financial Regulation, reminds the chiefs of State and Government that “even in the policies of a most eminently economic nature, their duties to respect, protect and fulfill the economic, social, cultural, civil and political human rights, including the right to development, do not cease, but should take primacy in every commitment they undertake.”

The civil society organizations demand in the text “action” on issues such as the “endorsement of worldwide stimuli measures according to human rights principles”; “reforms to prevent speculative activity in financial markets from undermining the enjoyment of human rights”; limits to “the damage to public funding of financial institutions that collapse due to excessive risk-taking”; “regulations of bank capital requirements consistent with human rights standards”; “agreement to increase the relative fiscal pressure on the banking sector and to cooperate to increase transparency and mutual accountability in revenue mobilization”; and “an agreement to drastically reduce greenhouse emissions which contribute to climate change”.

In last couple months, we’ve already started sending this message with your help. Hundreds of you sent emails to your congressional representatives urging them to enforce the human rights requirements in the Merida Initiative towards Mexico. Then, an even greater number of you helped us to flood the State Department with faxes condemning them for doing the wrong thing on both Mexico and Colombia and demanding that they show us a real plan to support human rights in the year to come. Now we’re going to keep the momentum going with the Human Rights NOW campaign, in which we will: 

• Work hand-in-hand with human rights activists and victims of violence in Colombia and Mexico and bring them to Washington to tell the Capitol and the White House what's really happening on the ground;
• Pioneer an exciting new web outreach strategy that will add thousands of voices to our movement and get you the information you need to make change;
• Develop tools for grassroots activists like you to use when organizing in your communities; and 
• Help congressional allies ask tough questions and refocus aid away from big-ticket military hardware, towards human rights and humanitarian aid that promotes sustainable, positive change.