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Exploited Labor: News & Updates
Event
September 20, 2023
In addressing gang violence, El Salvador has become a world leader in imprisonment. Vast numbers of innocent people are jailed in the process. Over 67,000 people are incarcerated in El Salvador right now. This is the second highest per capita carceral rate in the world, surpassed only by the US.
Come hear a report back from a panel of organizers who’ve been collectively stewarding relationships of solidarity for over 100 years, about the context of US policy, and from IRTF members’ recent CIS delegation to El Salvador.
Event
October 7, 2023
This annual in-person event at John Carroll University (with COVID safety protocols) is expected to bring together hundreds of fair trade supporters, advocates, retailers, and vendors from across the state. The Expo will be an opportunity to continue building energy around the already vibrant Ohio fair trade movement and previous Expos. In addition to the Global Marketplace of fair trade vendors, we’ll host educational presentations and panels, including a fair trade fashion show for high school students and our Fair Trade Around the World passport program for kids.
RRN Letter
August 23, 2023
Land disputes are at the root of much of the state-sponsored violence in Honduras. There are many tracts of land that campesino families were given under previous programs of agrarian reform, but private landholders and companies still challenge the land titles.
In Yoro, 700 campesino families recently experienced firsthand the crushing violence of the state in its support of private companies. Azucarera del Norte SA (Azunosa) filed a civil lawsuit against the peasant organizations in the Guanchías sector, but no legal resolution has been determined. Instead, more than 100 police officers arrived on August 9 with tanks and other armored vehicles to force the campesino families to leave within two hours. They evicted about 3,000 people, united in at least 30 cooperatives. Crops and homes were burned in this egregious act of illegal state violence. Just the day before, the campesino organizations had signed an agreement with the Honduran Institute of Agricultural Marketing (IHMA) to sell their corn. But on August 9, police burned about 865 acres of corn, which would have yielded approximately 626,000 pounds of the essential grain in a nation the United Nations declared has 4.9 million suffering from moderate to mild food insecurity.
Recently, the government of President Xiomara Castro installed the Commission for Agrarian Security and Access to Land (Comisión de Seguridad Agraria y Acceso a la Tierra). Although the Commission has the objective of settling disputes over land titles, violent evictions have increased since its inception.
RRN Letter
August 22, 2023
The government of Colombia needs the full participation of members of REDSIPAZ (Red de Organizaciones Sindicales para la Defensa de lo Público y la Paz, or Trade Union Network for the Defense of Peace) to implement the Total Peace Plan that was announced by President Petro in August 2022. The Total Peace Plan is a multifaceted effort that seeks to minimize violence, protect civilians, and dismantle the many armed groups operating in Colombia. But members of REDSIPAZ have been facing attacks and difficult working conditions that are impeding their work to implement Colombia’s peace process.
One member of RESDIPAZ, the SINDHEP unión (Sindicato de Defensoras y Defensores de Derechos Humanos de la Defensoría del Pueblo) has been excluded from union contract negotiations by Carlos Ernesto Camargo Assis, the Defensor del Pueblo (Ombudsman for Human Rights).
The Memoria Viva union (Sindicato Nacional Memoria Viva de los Trabajadores de la Seguridad y Protección del Pueblo) has been at odds with its employer, the National Protection Unit (UNP, Unidad Nacional de Protección). Its members have repeatedly reported that many of the vehicles and means to protect them are not adequate, and when they malfunction, they are not replaced, which puts the lives of the protected persons and their escorts at risk.
We are urging that authorities in Colombia: (1) allow the participation of representatives of the Memoria Viva Union and other unions of REDSIPAZ as part of the teams developing public policies related to Total Peace, (2) ensure that all employees of UNP, including members of the Memoria Viva Union, are given the necessary resources, such as vehicles in good condition, to adequately ensure the safety of those who are in their care, and (3) instruct Ombudsman Carlos Camargo Assis to reinstate SINDHEP to the negotiation table.
News Article
June 30, 2023
On behalf of IRTF’s Rapid Response Network (RRN) members, we wrote six letters this month to heads of state and other high-level officials in southern Colombia, Guatemala, and Honduras, urging their swift action in response to human rights abuses occurring in their countries. We join with civil society groups in Latin America to: (1) protect people living under threat, (2) demand investigations into human rights crimes, (3) bring human rights criminals to justice.
IRTF’s Rapid Response Network (RRN) volunteers write six letters in response to urgent human rights cases each month. We send copies of these letters to US ambassadors, embassy human rights officers, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, regional representatives of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and desk officers at the US State Department. To read the letters, see https://www.irtfcleveland.org/content/rrn , or ask us to mail you hard copies.
News Article
June 28, 2023
June 28, 2023 marks 14 years since the 2009 coup in Honduras. The Honduras Solidarity Network (HSN) honors the years of resistance in Honduras to that coup and the 13 years of dictatorship it installed. We recognize that today the Honduran people continue to fight to dismantle all the structures of the post-coup dictatorship and are up against the same powerful forces they faced in 2009. These forces include the U.S. government and other governments such as Canada that supported the coup and were complicit with the narco-dictatorship. Read our statement for the anniversary here.
RRN Letter
June 23, 2023
In a nightclub in Cauca Department, on June 6, gunmen shot and killed Memoria Viva union member Alexander Garcés Biscunda and injured his brother Bleider Andrés Garcés Biscunda, also a member of the same union of security guards. This occurred just weeks after another Memoria Viva union member, Diego Mauricio Mejía Rojas, was killed in Putumayo Department, and Memoria Viva union member Jhon Jader Ferreyra was wounded in a separate attack in Tolima Department. These attacks against members of Memoria Viva come at a time when the union is negotiating contracts with government agencies, such as the National Protection Unit (UNP).
SINDHEP union members have long been at odds with their boss, Defensor del Pueblo Carlos Camargo. His office recently expelled SINDHEP (Sindicato de Defensoras y Defensores de Derechos Humanos de la Defensoría del Pueblo) from the negotiation table. This dismissal came just days after SINDHEP publicly denounced Camargo, warning about the risks of corruption, clientelism (patronage), and wiretapping of workers taking place under his administration. In March, 2021, SINDHEP accused Carlos Camargo of being complicit in state terrorism during the National Strike, criticizing him for undercounting assaults and killings by Colombian security forces and failing to protect the rights of protesters and social leaders. They called for his resignation.
We are urging that authorities in Colombia: (1) investigate the attack on Memoria Viva union members in Cauca on June 6, publish the results, and bring those responsible to justice, (2) instruct the UNP to negotiate in good faith with Memoria Viva, and (3) instruct the office of the Defensor del Pueblo to re-open negotiations with SINDHEP and stop intercepting private communications of its members
News Article
May 31, 2023
On behalf of IRTF’s Rapid Response Network (RRN) members, we wrote six letters this month to heads of state and other high-level officials in southern Colombia, Guatemala, and Honduras, urging their swift action in response to human rights abuses occurring in their countries. We join with civil society groups in Latin America to: (1) protect people living under threat, (2) demand investigations into human rights crimes, (3) bring human rights criminals to justice.
IRTF’s Rapid Response Network (RRN) volunteers write six letters in response to urgent human rights cases each month. We send copies of these letters to US ambassadors, embassy human rights officers, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, regional representatives of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and desk officers at the US State Department. To read the letters, see https://www.irtfcleveland.org/content/rrn , or ask us to mail you hard copies.
RRN Letter
May 12, 2023
Since January of this year, we have written letters to authorities in Honduras in response to eight assassinations of land and water defenders in the Aguán Valley. José Gilberto Martínez Cardona became the first defender killed in the Aguán Valley this year outside the departments of Colón or Atlántida. He was murdered on Tuesday, April 18, after participating in a commemoration of the International Day of Peasant Struggle. The 64-year-old community leader had been active in his community’s fight for their land and water for more than 30 years in Olanchito, Yoro Department. José Gilberto Martínez Cardona was a member of the National Association of Honduran Peasant Farmers (ANACH), as well as the secretary of the campesino cooperative “Blessing of God #2.”
News Article
May 10, 2023
One week ago, 33 Democrat representatives urged the U.S. Trade Representative and State Department to eliminate investor-state dispute settlement provisions from current and future trade deals in Honduras and the rest of South-and Central America. In a open letter they state that the investor-state dispute settlements (ISDS) is a "problematic corporate handout" system, which violates affected countries sovereignty.
For US companies the ISDS mechanism is a tool that is supposed to secure investments in Central-and South America by allowing corporations to sue nations for compensation if they abruptly change their policies towards corporate involvement and investment. The ISDS mechanism is closely related to the "Dominican Republic-Central American Free Trade Agreement" (CAFTA-DR). The Free Trade Agreement allows companies to acquire land in these countries and establish autonomous zones in which constitutional labor and environmental requirements are suspended.
In the specific case the congresspeople brought forward the U.S. investment company, Honduras Prospera Inc. claims of, close to $11 Billion in compensations from Honduras, after the Honduran congress repealed the law allowing the autonomous zones. If the compensation claim goes through, the small country would have to pay more than a third of its GDP to a greedy US corporation securing profits through agreements between the strongest and one of the smallest economies in the Americas, while draining Honduran tax payers for its losses.
The claim comes after the Honduran congress repealed the autonomous zones as unconstitutional and made an effort to expel them from their land. Throughout the Americas, the agreement led to a total of $27.8 Billion in ISDS settlement orders, most of which were against Argentina, Venezuela, Peru, Mexico, and Ecuador. If the $10 Billion settlement demand against Honduras would go through, this would blow every other claim out of the water and would open the doors for more companies suing for massive amounts of compensation.
In their paper, the lawmakers wrote that, "the broken ISDS has time and time again worked in favor of big business interests while infringing on the rights and sovereignty of our trading partners and their people."
We as IRTF are hopeful that the lawmakers' fight against the Dominican Republic-Central American Free Trade Agreement is successful, as it takes away Cental-and South American countries sovereignty and opens the door for human rights abuses, exploitive labor and environmental destruction, though this is unlikely.
But no matter what the outcome will be, we as IRTF will keep on fighting corporate greed and unjust business making in Central America.
Read the full letter here: https://www.warren.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2023.05.02%20Letter%20to%20T...