Efta-Colombia: Human rights disregarded
After just 18 months of negotiations, the European Free Trade Area (Efta), of which Switzerland is a member, signed a bilateral free trade agreement with Colombia at the end of November 2008.
The signing hardly attracted any public attention. Only a brief communiqué from the Department of Economics referred to the considerable breadth of topics involved. It does after all cover agricultural and industrial goods, services, investments, protection of intellectual property and government procurement. The human rights situation gets no mention, however, and this despite Colombia's often poor track record and Amnesty International's repeated description of the situation there as extremely worrying.
Things are slightly different with the USA, where Congress is also discussing a bilateral agreement with Colombia. The ratification of the agreement negotiated by the Bush Administration in 2006 is still pending. Trade unions and NGOs criticise the negative human rights impact not only of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe's security policies, but of his economic policies as well. For example, they point to the resettlement of millions of people to make way for multinational agribusinesses and mining companies.
Oddly, this seems of no importance to Switzerland. After all, under the Swiss Federal Constitution the protection of human rights is among the five main tenets of our foreign policy. And in any case Switzerland spent 6.5 million francs in Colombia in 2006 promoting human rights and peace and providing humanitarian aid. Where is the foreign policy coherence and credibility?
The preamble to the agreement does indeed refer to human rights and the core labour rights of the International Labour Organisation (ILO). But that is pro forma and non-binding. Switzerland likes to cultivate the international image of a country that is serious in its defence of human rights. It should therefore be expected to link economic agreements with human rights. But the State Secretariat for the Economy (Seco) dismisses this. For Marie-Gabrielle Ineichen, Ambassador responsible for trade agreements at Seco, it is «not politic to link trade agreements directly with human rights». Yet in Swiss Federal Government circles and in Efta the matter is being discussed, policies of other countries are being examined and thought is being given to whether to take a different approach in the future, Ineichen says.
Bastienne Joerchel, Alliance Sud
Published in: Alliance Sud News No. 58, Winter 2008/09
