Hi John,
This month, the UK is preparing to send a delegation to the UN Biodiversity Conference in Cali, on the west coast of Colombia. At the same time, the UK’s investment treaty with Colombia will quietly roll over from its initial ten-year term – meaning from this Thursday, either party is finally able to terminate the treaty.
The UK-Colombia deal contains the notorious investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism, also known as corporate courts. This gives corporations their own secretive tribunals in which to sue governments for harming their profits.
Earlier this year we forced the UK to leave the Energy Charter Treaty due to the threat to climate action contained in its corporate courts. Now we look to the UK’s other treaties containing ISDS, which are being weaponised to put corporations’ profits over the wellbeing of lands and communities across the world.
Colombia has been devastated by these corporate courts in recent years. With pending claims of $13 billion, equivalent to over 13% of the government’s annual budget, mining companies from the global north are suing Colombia in direct response to its policies for protecting the natural world, clean water and Indigenous people’s sovereignty.
Can you ask the UK trade minister to eliminate this risk to human rights and the environment in Colombia?
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Last year I visited the massive Cerrejón coal mine in Colombia, which has dispossessed thousands of the local Wayuu people, as part of a delegation of international trade campaigners. The Wayuu people fought and won a ruling against its expansion, which mega-miner Glencore is now ignoring based on the ISDS claim it raised in response.(1)
The UK-Colombia deal is enabling further corporate abuses: a mining company is using its UK office to sue the Colombian government after it dared to investigate non-payment of taxes by a huge nickel mine, which has caused serious and long-term health problems for the Indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities on whose land it sits.(2)
We’re working with seven other organisations and allies in Colombia to call on the UK government to take this opportunity to dismantle the treaty.
As the treaty’s window for termination opens, can you help us put pressure on the minister to act?
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The new government has a chance to redefine its approach to this regime of corporate power. Countries from the United States to Indonesia to Australia are rejecting ISDS – and Colombia is making strides away from the fossil fuel past, committing to end new oil and gas contracts and review its investment treaties, as well as backing the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty.
For the global action on climate we need, governments in the global north cannot keep other countries locked into fossil fuel dependence by maintaining the threat of investor claims through their trade deals.
The trade minister must meet Colombia in the middle and work with them to terminate the deal, a first step in a new process we’ll be pushing for – a review of all the UK’s ISDS agreements.
Thank you for helping us take our campaign against corporate courts into this next stage.
In solidarity,
Cleodie Rickard,
Trade campaigner at Global Justice Now
Notes
1. Report of the International Mission to Colombia, Global Justice Now, 15 August 2023
2. Indigenous Peoples struggle for a dignified life against Giant Nickel Miner South32, ABColombia, 7 August 2018
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