In an otherwise contentious race for the U.S. presidency, free trade has been a surprising point of convergence for President Obama and Governor Romney. Specifically, Obama has emphasized the success of the free trade deals (FTAs) passed last year with Colombia, Korea and Panama, saying these¨…are helping us to double our exports and sell […]
As Colombia prepares for peace talks with the nation’s oldest guerrilla group, the Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia (FARC) set to begin next week, a new report sheds light on the immense challenges to land restitution in Colombia, where conflict has displaced nearly five million people. ¨Still a Dream: Land Restitution on Colombia´s Caribbean Coast, ¨ […]
Today marks one year that The Association of Sick and Fired Workers of General Motors Colombia (ASOTRECOL) members have been camped outside the U.S. Embassy in Bogotá, Colombia in an act of protest. ASOTRECOL is an association of Colmotores, or General Motors Colombia, employees who assert they were injured while performing their duties at the company’s […]
The organization Global Witness recently released a briefing entitled “A Hidden Crisis? Increase in killings as tensions rise over land and forests.” The briefing shows that 711 activists defending rights related to land and forests have been assassinated in the last decade (2002-2011), word-wide. The report shows that Latin America is home to three of the […]
World Refugee Day gives us a chance to reflect on the refugees closer to home, including thousands of Colombian refugees living throughout the Western Hemisphere. And the opportunity to understand what is driving them out of Colombia. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reports today that there are officially 400,000 Colombian refugees living […]
Fatou Bensouda, newly sworn in as prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, is getting a lot of advice. Much of it is well-meaning. As the first African and the first woman to hold the post, Bensouda has rightly inspired much good feeling. For those who disagreed with her predecessor, one of her assets is, apparently, […]
Here are the week’s must read articles: “Good Leak, Bad Leak” By Uri Friedman Foreign Policy A brief but informative look at the various leaks during the Obama administration and their political and legal implications. “Understanding Cyberspace is Key to Defending It” By Robert O’Harrow Jr. Washington Post In the aftermath of Stuxnet and its […]
Biogas saves Kenyan school money, conserves nature A school in the rural Rift Valley of central Kenya is a model for successful small-scale response to climate change, according to this article. The school cooks with biogas produced from latrines, eliminating fuel and sanitation costs while reducing harmful carbon emissions and sparing surrounding forests some 150 […]
Colombia is enjoying a growth spurt, thanks in large part to security gains made in recent years. The amount of coca cultivated in Colombia has decreased from 357,800 acres in 2001 to 140,847 acres in 2010. An international aid effort is helping the Colombian government. Notes an article in today’s Miami Herald: The alternative development […]
While democracy struggles to take hold in Myanmar and the Maldives, last weekend’s Summit of the Americas in Colombia raised some interesting questions about development and democracy in the Western Hemisphere. Events at the conference itself have been addressed elsewhere in FPA blogs (and here); I’d like to examine what the conference indicates about the […]
Three main issues surrounded this year’s Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia this past weekend. For the most part, those issues created a division between the Americans and Canadians poised against most of Latin America with the exception of the prostitution scandal that will likely be more of an issue between Obama and the […]
On May 30 Colombia will hold elections to decide who will govern the country the next four years. Last February, after the Constitutional Court of Colombia banned President Álvaro Uribe from seeking a second reelection, it appeared that the race would be defined by voters choosing among two candidates who sought to present themselves as […]
A private meeting between the Venezuelan and Colombian leaders apparently ended in a shouting match on Monday. They were both attending a Latin American summit in Cancun, Mexico. An already tense discussion appeared to blow up when Chávez raised the issue of Colombian paramilitaries. The explanation of the words used is critical, since the meeting […]
On Monday, Hugo Chávez accused Colombia of using a US-manufactured spy plane to over-fly its airspace. Colombian officials denied not only that this happened, but stated that their military did not have such the required military technology. The retort from Bogotá via its Defense Minister, Gabriel Silva, included a little bit of humor: perhaps the […]
Overview This past year was another interesting one for Venezuela, and it is a country where one never knows what will happen next. Overall, Chávez continued to advance his “Bolivarian revolution”. This effort included a number of laws passed by the National Assembly, a body that typically rubber stamps initiatives proposed by the Venezuelan president. […]