Local and international campaigns will be promoted for denouncement and to raise public awareness
The IUF’s Dairy Sector condemns
Free Trade Agreements
Free Trade Agreements
Local and international campaigns will be promoted for denouncement and to raise public awareness
Amidst a full auditorium the IUF’s Dairy Sector’s 3rd International Conference concluded in Sunchales, Argentina, last Thursday 20th with strong critics aimed at Free Trade Agreements.
Delegations from eighteen countries took part in the Conference and closed the event with the approval of a declaration that “condemns the process and the bases of trade and intervention agreements ruled by corporate interests such as the Free Trade Agreement (Tratado de Libre Comercio – TLC) between Colombia and the United States of America, the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA), and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).
The declaration reads: “Trade and investment agreements should not:
- Be negotiated in the absence of an open and democratic process to enable the participation and control by the citizens, their representatives and other members of civil society, including workers’ unions.
- Guarantee large investors the entitlement to sue governments when these prioritize the interest of workers and the rights of citizens over the benefits of transnational companies and investors.
- Limit the right of workers to fulfill their basic needs, including food and medicines, by means of the barriers imposed on the basis of an alleged intellectual property of transnational companies or the alleged rights of investors.
- Reduce wages and allow for precarious working conditions, or destroy the sustainability of workers and small-scale producers of the dairy sector.
- Undermine, or support the removal of, democratic rights, including the rights to trade, and food safety and sovereignty.”
Campaigns opposing FTAs will be commenced
AThe declaration also announced that “the members of the IUF’s Dairy Sector Committee will implement the campaign at the local level and will contribute at the international level to battle trade and investment agreements, favoring commercial relations that abide by human rights, and food safety and sovereignty.”
The document concluded with the following statement: “The members of the IUF‘s Dairy Sector shall demand from their governments respect of human rights in the negotiation of trade and investment agreements on behalf of their peoples.”