More human insecurity and displacement

people traveling on a bus
Migration of displaced people in Colombia.
Photo courtesy of David Bacon.

In Colombia, 3.7 million victims of the war have been internally displaced. They've left behind their ancestral lands and joined the misery belts in Colombia's growing cities. The number of those displaced in Colombia is second only to the Sudan in Africa.

The U.S.-financed aerial herbicide spray program (fumigations) fails to deter cultivation of coca. In many cases the fumigations have wiped out rural farmers' food crops and impeded their efforts to grow legal crops to sustain themselves. According to the United Nations there is credible, reliable evidence that aerial spraying along the Colombia-Ecuador border damages people's physical health.[7] Despite the spraying of more than 2 million acres of illegal and legal crops in Colombia, U.S. government data show a net gain in coca cultivation in Colombia--about 19 thousand more acres in 2005 than in 2000.[8]

Coca production is a product of poverty. The Colombian Department of National Planning estimates that 49.2 percent of Colombians live below the poverty line. More aerial fumigations, war, and rural displacement resulting from the effects of a trade deal will only increase coca dependence.

For example, if the trade deal is ratified, the 23 percent of Colombia's population employed in agriculture could be displaced by competition with U.S. imports. In the 1990's, Colombia significantly liberalized its agricultural market, which had the effect of increasing both rural unemployment and coca production. Similar results were seen during the coffee crisis of the 1990's when coffee prices plummeted and significant rural unemployment led to the increase in the cultivation of illicit products.

Another example comes from Mexico, where 13 years of NAFTA and the resulting flood of low-cost corn, wheat, and beef imports from the U.S. caused the displacement of 1.7 million small-scale Mexican farmers, many of whom migrated to the U.S.

If anyone in Colombia is to benefit from a trade deal, it will likely be the paramilitary-supported large landholders exporting cash crops, in many cases on land taken from the displaced.

[7] Mission of Paul Hunt, "The UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to the Highest Attainable Standard of Health, Closing Remarks to the Press", 5/18/07, Quito, Ecuador.
[8] Isacson, Adam. "Ctl-Alt-Delt," Plan Colombia and Beyond, Center for International Policy, January 22, 2007.