May 12, 2008
Colombian activist urges Canadians to reject Canada-Colombia free trade deal
According to Marilyn Machado, the treatment of black communities in Colombia constitutes one of the worst humanitarian crises facing Africans in the Diaspora. With Afro-Colombians facing the daily threat of massacres, threats and intimidation, Machado urged PSAC members to get involved in the struggle for Afro-Colombians' human rights by rejecting a proposed free trade deal with Colombia.
Machado, a representative of the organization Process of Black Communities (PCN) in Colombia, visited PSAC's National Office on May 7, in conjunction with the Union's Social Justice Fund. The SJF was created by the PSAC in 2003 to allow the Union to consolidate and focus its work on social justice – both at home and around the world. The Fund supports international development work, Canadian anti-poverty initiatives and emergency relief in Canada and internationally. The SJF also sponsors worker education and worker-to-worker exchanges.
Machado is a community organizer, an investigator and a spokesperson at a national and international level on issues facing the Afro-Colombian population. For the last 16 years, she has been working with PCN, a grassroots movement that brings together various organizations and individuals working for the recognition and implementation of the rights to territory, identity, participation and development of Afro-Colombians.
Worsening crisis
Machado is particularly concerned about the implications of a proposed Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement. She maintains that free trade with Canada would only serve to deepen the humanitarian crisis and widespread injustices in Colombia.
Colombia is a country of 45 million people, of which 30 per cent are black people descended from slaves. The territories belonging to Afro-Colombians are extremely biologically diverse and resource rich. For these reasons, national and multinational corporations are trying to obtain access to these lands, according to Machado.
Currently 79 per cent of Afro-Colombians who reside in collective territories have been internally displaced through massacres, killings, threats and intimidation. Companies take advantage of this violence and displacement to cultivate crops without the consent of the rightful land owners. Many of these projects have resulted in severe environmental harm to the biodiversity of the region.
Rather than assist Afro-Colombians by strengthening their territorial rights and helping the internally displaced return to their ancestral lands, the Colombian government has pushed legislation through Congress that dismantlesthe territorial rights of the Afro-Colombian communities. This legislation includes the Forestry Law, changes in the mining code and the Statute on Rural Development.
Defending human rights
Machado and the PCN work on a range of human rights issues related to the Afro-Colombian communities, including defending and strengthening cultural identity, protecting and promoting the right to communal territory and advocating for control over resource exploitation. The PCN also promotes self-management of Afro-Colombian communities, and human rights of Afro-Colombians amidst the internal conflict.
Machado urges Canadians to say no to the free trade agreement between Canada and Colombia. Despite claims to the contrary, Machado maintains that the FTA would erode the self-governance of Afro-Colombian communities even further and facilitate the encroachment of corporations on their territory. According to Machado, this would disrupt local community governance structures, and inevitably displace thousands of farmers and fisherpeople from their ancestral lands.
For more information about PSAC Social Justice Fund, visit www.psac-sjf.org.
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Date Modified : 2008/05/12
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