Human Rights and the Environment

Case Study: Free Trade Area of the Americas

Country: Antigua & Barbuda, Argentina, Venezuela, Uruguay, United States, Trinidad & Tobago, Suriname, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Grenada, Guatamala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Saint Kitts & Nevis, Saint Lucia, St. Vincent & Grenadines

Region: Central & South America, North America

Issues: Public Participation, Indigenous People, Agriculture, Trade

Plans to extend the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) south to Central and South America in the form of a proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) are alarming citizen organizations across the hemisphere.[1] In the eyes of many, NAFTA has brought poverty and ruin to countless Mexican farmers, and forced them to work in low-wage factory jobs by driving down agricultural prices in the face of subsidized U.S. crops. NAFTA has also undermined governments' and citizens' rights to protect their environment. Taking this concept and forcing it on the rest of the hemisphere through the FTAA is a threat that has galvanized the highly committed and organized indigenous federations of South America.

Indigenous people stand to lose the most from the FTAA. They are generally the most impoverished and vulnerable people in the region, and face daily obstacles to true economic opportunity and social advancement, due to racial and other forms of discrimination and human rights abuses. In the face of centuries of colonialism, oppression, and poverty, indigenous people are energetic defenders of their cultures and rights, which are based on very different principles than those promoted by the modern free trade economic system. They fear that imposing a North American style economy on the region at the expense of sovereign governance will overcome their traditional ways of working, eating and living, and spell the end of their culture.

Because government representatives often fail to represent their interests, indigenous organizations fear that the secret nature of the FTAA negotiations will exclude the concerns of their members and offer little to help them. To make their concerns known to the world, hundreds of indigenous and citizen organizations gathered in Quito, Ecuador, the site of the closed-door meeting of government ministers negotiating the FTAA in late October 2002.

Another meeting was held in Miami in November 2003, at which trade ministers from the 34 negotiating countries failed to reach agreement. Although they avoided a collapse similar to the World Trade Organization's meeting two months earlier in Cancun, the countries ended the meeting a day early, concluding that there was nothing more to discuss. The countries had reduced the scope of each of the nine substantive issues and left Miami with a vague framework on which to base future negotiations.[2] The next meeting was held in Puebla, Mexico, where differences on the contentious issue of U.S. agricultural subsidies, and their implicit implications on the rights to food and work, prevented the negotiations from moving forward.[3]

[1] See Oxfam America, FTAA Poses Danger to Indigenous People, at http://www.oxfamamerica.org/advocacy/art6502.html (last visited Mar. 9, 2004) .

[2] See New York Times, U.S. and Brazil End Talks (November 21, 2003).

[3] See Associated Press, Talks on a free trade accord of the Americas end without reaching agreement (February 6, 2004).

Last Updated: 09/09/05