Hi John,
The Colombian Ambassador to the UK has it right: “Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) have become a bloodbath for Colombia and many other countries.” (1)
The ambassador has just called for the UK-Colombia deal to be terminated. The secretive corporate court mechanism in the deal has been weaponised against his country again and again: multinationals suing for payouts when action taken to protect people, nature and the climate infringes on their profit margins.
UK trade minister Douglas Alexander is about to travel to Colombia to meet with his counterparts. Now’s our chance to tell him: time to quit the deal!
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Imagine the biggest coal mine in Latin America. Now imagine it’s expanding onto your land, polluting your water sources, dispossessing your neighbours from their homes. Imagine it’s owned by a multinational mining giant. It takes a lot to fight back – but this is what the Indigenous Wayuu people in northern Colombia did in the face of the Cerrejón mine.
After a decades-long campaign, the Wayuu people won a Constitutional Court ruling against its expansion. But Glencore hit back: a mammoth claim against the Colombian government.
Before selling its shares in the mine to Glencore, British company Anglo-American did the same, using corporate courts in the UK-Colombia treaty.
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These investment treaties put in peril the bold steps communities and countries like Colombia are taking against companies that extract and exploit in their lands. Such a threat to democracy and sovereignty has no place in a world fighting climate crisis.
Off the back of talking up its decarbonisation commitments at the COP29 climate summit, the UK must look squarely at its blind spot: the trade agreements tying our own and our partners’ hands from acting against fossil fuel laggards.
Can you help us get the message to the trade minister at this critical moment of his visit to Colombia?
In solidarity,
Cleodie Rickard,
Trade campaigner at Global Justice Now
Notes
1. https://x.com/RoyBarreras/status/1857890116921946388
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