Concerns over the FTAA

Oxfam believes that radical changes are needed to trade and investment rules in the Americas in order to promote poverty reduction, respect for human rights and sustainable development. An integration project must be based on the participation of all social actors if it is going to address the social inequality and poverty on the continent.

The text on agriculture, investment, and intellectual property in the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americans (FTAA) draft would favor the interests of large corporations over the rights of people in the Americas. By focusing on these three particular areas, Oxfam hopes to complement analyses by a broad range of civil society organizations.

The fundamental principle of our analysis is that people everywhere have a right to food, sustainable development, and livelihoods. Rural and family agriculture still provides the highest number of jobs and a large percentage of the national income in the poorest areas of the Americas. In Latin American and the Caribbean, 123 million people live in rural areas and depend on agriculture. Seventy-seven million (63.7%) of them live in poverty, of whom 47 million live in extreme poverty. In the United States and Canada there are also a large number of small producers who live in poverty. In the US, 14.2% of the rural population is poor, and over 500 small farmers go bankrupt every week.

Similarly, the disproportionate focus on investors’ rights limits the rights of developing countries to regulate foreign investments based on national development needs. The principal of national treatment that investors press for in the FTAA places at risk the development of local technological and production capacities that all quality investment should promote. In the same way, it blocks governments' and citizens' ability to counteract the negative social and environmental effects caused by much investment in the region.

Intellectual property rules must remain outside of the FTAA and other bilateral and regional trade agreements, since they will only result in maintaining the interests of pharmaceutical and agribusinesses to the detriment of public health objectives and the right of developing countries to guarantee food security and protect biodiversity. At the same time, it is important to end the use of mechanisms to apply pressure on developing countries, such as the use of Section 301 of the US Trade Act, which threatens achieving more equitable trade strategies in the Americas.

The enormous gap that separates these proposals from those currently being negotiated leads us to believe, along with many other organizations and movements on the continent, that the proposed FTAA is not consistent with the promotion of sustainable development in the Americas. In short, an integral and radically different proposal is necessary, which provides the flexibility required for the governments of developing countries in the region to protect and promote the interests of their farmers, workers, women, indigenous people and citizens, and thus restore their ability to choose their own development and poverty reduction strategies.

Please send an email now to your representative and your senators. Tell them to oppose the FTAA as proposed.