The EU-Chile Trade Agreement, extractivism and human rights

by Patricia Muñoz Cabrera

The EU-Chile Agreement comes at a time of unprecedented environmental damage and social tensions caused by successive waves of resource extraction in the Atacama Desert in the north of Chile. Already in its 2016 Outlook, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development wrote that “Chile’s natural resource-based economic model was starting to show its limits.”

In this paper, presented at a WIDE+ workshop in May 2024 in Paris and later on at the IAFFE Annual Conference 2024 in Rome, Patricia Muñoz Cabrera critically assesses the incorporation of gender equality in trade agreements, with particular emphasis on trade in critical minerals.

Firstly, she examines Europe’s surge in trade in critical minerals, drawing connections with the gender equality narrative in the recently signed EU-Chile trade agreement.

Secondly, she discusses the local impacts of lithium in the North of Chile, the resistance strategies and proposals from local women’s groups, indigenous communities and social movements, assessing their relevance for transformative trade policies, namely, trade policies and business practices enshrined in fundamental rights (human rights, including women’s rights, indigenous peoples’ rights, and Nature’s rights).

A major critique in this paper is that the gender equality narrative informing the EU-Chile trade agreement remains rhetorical and disconnected from the social and ecological harm done by centuries of unstainable extraction of critical minerals in Chile, and does not encourage enforcement of human and environmental rights, both of which have been historically overlooked by Chilean governments and abused by extractive industries in the country.

Download full paper (11 pages, pdf): The EU-Chile Trade Agreement, extractivism and human rights