Human Rights (Colombia)

Andrew Love Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd November 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Andrew Love (Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op)]

Thank you, Mrs Brooke, for calling me to speak.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Jim Sheridan) on securing this debate and on securing it in the week that President Santos is in the UK. One hopes that not only the Minister but President Santos himself will hear the concerns that are being expressed today.

I will speak briefly about trade unionists. My hon. Friend and indeed all Members who have spoken in the debate have touched upon the habitual abuses committed against trade unionists in Colombia. During the past 25 years, 3,000 trade unionists have been murdered, often in front of their families. I will come back to that issue in a moment, but before I do so it is important that we discuss the current Colombian Government’s approach to trade union rights.

For some time, Colombia has been seeking to reach a free trade agreement with the European Union—that was touched upon by my hon. Friend—and with the United States, Canada and other countries. President Obama was deeply unhappy about the human rights situation in Colombia and talked about it in his campaign speeches. As one means of going some way to addressing the situation facing any organised labour in Colombia—workers need that help in Colombia, where people work in the most basic of conditions in a mineral-rich country, earning a pittance while making millions for multinationals—the Colombian Government agreed, under pressure, to what was called a labour action plan. That was stipulated by the Americans as a condition of their entering into a free trade agreement with Colombia. Some of the measures included in that plan held out promise of improving labour and human rights, and they were widely trumpeted as if they would resolve the labour rights situation.

Now, more than seven months since that action plan was signed, all three federations of the Colombian labour movement and the highly respected ENS trade union school have said that they were not consulted in the drawing-up of the action plan and that the Colombian Government have failed to implement the measures outlined in that plan, because:

“the State as a whole is not committed to the Action Plan related to Labour rights”.

The ENS trade union school has said:

“the new labor agenda is not a reality, since business owners and public servants continue to broadly violate labor and union rights.”

Since the action plan was signed, 16 trade unionists have been assassinated. In normal circumstances, I would have gone on in much greater detail about the problems faced by trade unions, but they have been well documented today. However, I ask the Minister: did he take these concerns up with President Santos in his meeting earlier today, and what further action does he propose the British Government take to address all the trade union and human rights violations, in the context of the trade agreement that is likely to come forward at a European level?