DR-CAFTA and Worker’s Rights: Moving from Paper to Practice

This study analyses the “White Paper” projects and initiatives taken by the US government to improve labor rights practice in DR-CAFTA countries. Based on a three year study, WOLA has concluded that U.S. funding for projects to strengthen the enjoyment and enforcement of labor rights in the DR-CAFTA countries is insufficient to address institutional weakness and pervasive impunity. In this report WOLA defines labor law reforms needed in the six participating countries and recommends implementation methods

The fatal attraction of civil war economies: foreign direct investment and political violence. A case study of Colombia

Civil war acutely inhibits economic growth, according to a prominent set of civil war literature. However, recent scholarship observes that Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), considered a central vehicle of growth, is entering countries with internal armed conflicts unabated. Furthermore, some civil war economies exhibit substantial increases in FDI during conflict. According to this scholarship, FDI enters conflict zones in spite of violence. This article contrastingly adopts a critical framework acknowledging the often violent characteristics of globalised capitalism. By analysing Colombia’s oil industry (the country’s largest sector of FDI), this article suggests that civil war violence can create conditions that facilitate FDI inflows. More specifically, this article posits that violence perpetrated by armed groups sympathetic to the interests of the oil sector – namely, the public armed forces and right-wing paramilitaries – have facilitated FDI in Colombia’s oil sector. In particular, processes of forced displacement and violence against civilian groups have served to protect economically important infrastructure and have acquired land for oil exploration. Moreover, civilian groups deemed inimical to oil interests have been violently targeted. By using disaggregate-level data on the conflict in Arauca, an important oil producing region of Colombia, this case study indicates that intensifying levels of civil war violence in areas of economic interest are followed by increases in oil production, exploration and investment