The Social Justice Committee opposes the negotiations for a Free Trade Area of the America

The Social Justice Committee is opposed to the ongoing FTAA negotiations. It demands that the agreements under negotiation be abandoned, not modified or reformed.

Here is the SJC position on the FTAA:

Economic activity is a means to the satisfaction of certain human needs and should therefore be subordinate to the values of the societies in which such activity is taking place and to respect for fundamental human rights. Furthermore, both intrinsically and in relation to economic activity, fundamental human rights are indivisible. The journalists who are imprisoned for their political commentaries, the workers who are dismissed for trying to organize a trade union, the children who are made ill by urban air pollution, the native communities whose rivers are poisoned by effluent from mines – all are suffering violations of their fundamental human rights. It therefore goes without saying that international commercial treaties should not be negotiated and signed in the absence of a pre–existing framework of respect for basic human rights.

At this time, virtually all of the countries of the Americas suffer from widespread and profound social problems that are closely connected to, and in many instances directly caused by, the unjust distribution of national wealth. It is to be expected that any major new commercial treaties would exacerbate rather than remedy this situation of fundamental social injustice. Indeed, there is ample evidence that just such a process has occurred since the signing of the NAFTA accord, that is to say that there has been a widening of the gap between poor and rich in all three signing countries and there has been a marked increase in absolute poverty in Mexico.

There is increasing evidence of the damage that is being done to the environment by many forms of economic activity. It is therefore imperative that there be a concerted effort to reform the international economic system in such a way that human needs can be met without further destruction of the natural world – of which human being are inevitably a part. All major international commercial treaties should only be negotiated within the context of this urgently–needed reform; they must therefore be postponed until this reform has not only been accepted but embarked upon.

When we consider the human rights record of the countries of the Americas, if we take as an example the three NAFTA members, we find that:

• On human rights, no less than eleven United Nations and Inter–American human rights entities have requested Mexico to take remedial measures with regard to specific situations and cases involving serious violations of fundamental human rights.
• The United States systematically violates the rights of children by applying the death penalty to persons who were minors at the time when they committed the crimes for which they are punished. The United States has not ratified any of the agreements that are part of the Inter–American human rights system. The United States has played a leading role at the international level in promoting the interests of business over protection of the environment and human welfare.
• Canada has signed none of the agreements that are part of the Inter–American human rights system. Canada has played a negative role in international environmental conferences on global warming and bio-diversity, favouring business interests over human health and welfare.
• Both Canada and the United States in their activities within the International Financial Institutions such as the IMF, World Bank and Inter American Development Bank are strong supporters of structural adjustment policies. These policies are an infringement of the democratic rights of nations and their people to determine their own destiny. They have been responsible for an increase in inequality in many countries, and a tremendous amount of suffering on the part of the poor. They constitute an assault on economic and social human rights.

Many of the intended free trade partners suffer from endemic human rights abuses. In the Americas in 1999 there were:

• reports of the use of torture by state authorities in twenty–three countries
• arbitrary arrests and detentions in eight countries,
• enforced disappearance in nine countries, and
• extra–judicial executions reported in eight countries.

As Human Rights Watch concluded in its World Report 2000, in the Americas "one thing remained constant: the everyday violation of human rights–including police abuse, torture, and lack of access to effective justice systems–required far greater attention from policy makers than they were willing to recognize or give. There is nothing in the human rights record of the countries of the Americas, with few exceptions, to suggest that they are capable of negotiating an agreement that has human well-being as its first consideration and that is built upon respect for human rights."

It is not within the scope of this statement to discuss the separate but related questions of respect for the natural world and for animal life and of respect for the integrity of the human being. However, there is ample reason to believe that the planned pan–American commercial agreement would lead to an increase in economic activities (particularly in the so–called life sciences) of a kind that many people believe to be dangerous to plant life, abusive of animal welfare, and in violation of the sanctity of human life.

For all of the foregoing reasons, the Social Justice Committee is opposed to the ongoing negotiations for a Free Trade Area of the Americas. The Social Justice Committee does not ask for the agreements under negotiation to be modified or reformed. We demand that the present negotiations be abandoned, and that the governments of the Americas assume their rightful role of assuring the well–being of their citizens, and of promoting respect for the totality of human rights at the hemispheric level