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The spirit of the Lord has been given to me, for he has annointed me. |
On these pages, you will find articles about creating justice for all, spreading peace and caring for Mother Earth and all creation. Click here ... for links to other groups involved in promoting the common good.
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All Free Trade Is Not Fair Trade… First, let’s agree that trade itself is generally a good thing. Trade allows people from different parts of the world to get and use products they could not otherwise have. It encourages contact among different peoples, and allows us to understand one another better. Fair trade is especially beneficial for people in countries still trying to develop because it provides more markets for their goods and services. The key is that this trade must be fair—fair to workers in each country, fair in its use of natural resources, fair in its treatment of the earth. The proposed agreement with Colombia does not meet any of these standards of fairness. Under the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement, as under all such “free trade” agreements, there is no requirement to meet international labor standards. If a government has weak labor laws—which is true of Colombia—workers are at risk. We end up with the worst of both worlds—workers in this country lose their jobs while workers in Colombia work for lower wages in an unsafe environment. Colombia also has a poor track record in controlling violence towards union activists. Paramilitary groups, some possibly representing corporations, have harassed and even killed union workers. The Colombian government has failed to keep its own people safe from these groups. One of the more insidious aspects of this and other “free trade” agreements is that they allow corporations to sue host governments when government action results in the loss of future profits by the corporation. In Colombia, for instance, the government had passed legislation that expropriated land from indigenous and Afro-Colombian peoples for development purposes. This law was subsequently overturned by Colombian courts. However, if the Free Trade Agreement had been in effect when this occurred, companies would have been allowed to sue the Colombian government for lost profits. Under this Free Trade Agreement, logging will increase in Colombia’s portion of the Amazon rainforest. This type of logging decimates the forests that are natural repositories of carbon dioxide, thus significantly contributing to global warming. We also know that depletion of the rainforests threatens the many species living there. Corporations taking and using these rich resources also deprive many small farmers and other indigenous peoples of desperately needed resources.
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Pie in the Sky—No More! I recently became “reacquainted” with the Millennium Development Goals (MDG). The MDG provide an agenda for reducing poverty and improving lives that world leaders agreed on at the Millennium Summit in September 2000. These goals are directed towards eradication of extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality, improving health and reducing diseases, ensuring environmental sustainability and building a global partnership for development. What is most significant about these goals is that they are not “Pie in the Sky.” With the investment of a mere .7% of Gross National Product (GNP) from the developed nations of the world, they can be achieved by 2015. What will it take to make this a reality? Two things are necessary for these goals to be reached. First, we must become more aware of these goals and the possibility of achieving them, and we must share this awareness with others. Next, we must develop in our community and leadership the political will to accomplish these goals. Along the way we may need to correct some common misconceptions related to foreign aid. One of the more popular misconceptions in this country is that we are already extremely generous in our foreign assistance. In fact, the United States devotes less than .2% of GNP to foreign aid (lowest in the developed world). And, this includes aid that goes primarily for servicing foreign debt, emergency food aid, and aid actually paid to US consultants. If we factor out these forms of aid, US government development assistance (aid to actually raise people out of poverty) is literally only pennies per person for the world’s poorest. As Franciscans, our obligation to justice for the poor mandates that we work to change systems that keep people in desperate poverty. This is what the MDG attempts to do. Information on the Millennium Development Goals is available from the following websites: Leadership Conference of Women Religious (www.lcwr.org), Sisters Online (sistersonline.org) and the United Nations (www.un.org). Information may also be obtained by contacting Jeff Odendahl, Office for Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation. |
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Click here ... for links to other groups involved in promoting the common good. |
Jeff Odendahl, Coordinator |
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Franciscan Sisters of Little Falls, Minnesota
116 8th Avenue SE, Little Falls, MN 56345
(320)632-2981m info@fslf.org