On March 17, WOLA and nine other national and international civil society organizations published a statement calling on the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (Jurisdicción Especial para la Paz, JEP)—the 2016 peace accord’s transitional justice tribunal—to open a macro case to investigate sexual violence in the context of Colombia’s internal armed conflict.
According to the organizations, Colombia has an international obligation to act with due diligence to prevent, investigate, and prosecute sexual violence perpetrated by both state and non-state armed actors and to provide reparations to victims. The obligation to document, investigate, and prosecute these crimes, particularly against women and LGBT+ persons, and to adopt a gender-sensitive analysis of major international crimes has taken root and become increasingly ingrained in the culture of international justice.
The peace accord and the norms that regulate the functioning of the JEP incorporate a gender-based focus that see sexual violence as an autonomous crime with no concessions. These obligations, together with the principle of centering victims, commit the JEP to prioritize the rights of all victims of sexual violence. The opening of a national macro case would make visible, in an autonomous and specialized manner, the way in which discrimination affects rights to sexual liberty, integrity, and autonomy of the victims. A macro case is essential to materialize the approach of centralizing victims, which should guide the actions of the JEP.
Given the historical and very high level of impunity for these crimes, along with the low level of acknowledgment by those responsible, the JEP has a responsibility to generate conditions to overcome these barriers and guarantee their rights to truth, justice, and reparation. Civil society and victims have insisted that this is an urgent measure for the satisfaction of victims’ rights, as opening the macro case would improve their situation. The peace accord and the laws that develop it gave the JEP instruments to investigate sexual violence.
Read the full Spanish statement here. Read the unofficial English translation here.
Women accounted for a significant percentage of victims of the violence from Colombia’s armed conflict—an unequal distribution of pain and overall suffering. Even 40% of the FARC guerrillas ranks were women, yet they remained excluded from the initial negotiations that led to Colombia’s 2016 peace accord. This intentional silencing reflects a larger pattern of structural violence that existed prior to the armed conflict, which is taught in the home, reinforced in society, and ultimately legitimized by the state. Yet, despite this oppressive status quo, women in Colombia have been active participants in advocating for themselves, their communities, and the peace process by institutionalizing their respective emotions.
Women’s groups across Colombia are leading peacebuilding efforts to bring to light the disproportionate, gendered impact of the internal armed conflict’s violence. For instance, Colombian feminist organization Casa de la Mujer, in collaboration with a series of other organizations, published their recent report entitled TruthIs: Politicizing Women’s Pain and Emotions. The report, filled with sobering testimonies and concerted recommendations by victims of gender-based violence, was submittedtothe Truth Commission—an entity that forms part of Colombia’s tripartite transitional justice system and is responsible for clarifying the truth of what occurred during Colombia’s decades-long internal armed conflict. Three of Colombia’s departments—Meta, Córdoba, and Cauca—have dedicated chapters in the report, as they are home to many Indigenous and Afro-descendants who were disproportionately affected by the conflict. With the report’s submission to the Truth Commission, these women’s groups are contributing to implementing the 2016 peace accord’s trailblazing gender provisions, urging they be used as mechanisms for justice.
Women and the Peace Process
Reports like TruthIs are possible because of the efforts placed forth to include a gender approach in the peace process. The inclusion of the peace accord’s innovative gender provisions was no easy feat. When peace negotiations began between the Colombian state and FARC guerrillas, women were not granted a seat at the table to participate and it took the intentional efforts of about 450 women’s organizations to push then-Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos to allow for two seats. In September 2014, a gender subcommittee was launched that included five members in total from the FARC and the government. But nonetheless, the gender provisions that resulted from the subcommittees’ contributions received significant pushback, mainly due to an opposition movement that labeled the recognition of LGBTQ+ and women rights as a “gender ideology”. This push came mainly from evangelical factions who sought to hinder advances in protecting different gender identities and sexual orientations. Unfortunately, this opposition movement succeeded in helping deter support to the peace accord and help the plebiscite fail, resulting in the “no” vote succeeding by a margin of less than 1 percent.
Despite these setbacks, women’s eventual integration allowed them to play an essential role in the delegations of victims, where women represented 60% of the members. This integration has led the Colombian government and the FARC to release statements that reflected positively on women’s rights, inclusivity, and diversity. The largest impact can be seen in legislation around sexual violence in which many agreements have a gender focus and sexual violence is listed as a crime that can not be amnestied under the accord. Essentially, the peace process without women is not adept to face the dynamic problems that face civil society and the Colombian government.
Women’s lives before the armed-conflict
The report brings attention to the continuum of violence that existed prior to the known inception of the armed conflict. The pre-established systems of oppression against women were deeply ingrained from interpersonal relations and into the larger structure of financial, economic, and physical oppression in Colombian society. The harmful ideology of machismo upholds and perpetuates a traditional expression of masculinity and femininity, which is simultaneously tied to a rigid gender binary in which women are inferior to men.
“Habia una buena relación, las mujeres eran sumisas porque el que mandaba era el marido”145
“There was a good relationship, the women were submissive because the husband was in charge “145
Beyond this, machismo minimizes and normalizes violence against women often becoming internalized in men and women. Throughout the interview process, women shared that they found their relationships to their spouses, families, and communities to be generally positive in terms of their quality of life. However, In the same recounting of events they would include anecdotes of violence within families, partners, and insecurity for women in general:
“En alugnas familias había conflictos ecónomicos y pasionales cuando un hombre cela a una mujer, también en las familias había maltrato y violencia…no dejaban salir a la mujer por celos y golpes” (145, TruthIs)
“In some families, there were economic conflicts and conflicts of passion when a man was jealous of a woman, in families, there was mistreatment and violence…they did not let the woman go out because of jealousy and beatings” (145, TruthIs).
Additionally, there was an extreme division of labor and enforced subordination in which women had no rights to education or entrepreneurship. This, in turn, would not only confirm the biases against women but limit women to vulnerable socio-economic situations. The intentional retraction of resources was a manifestation of how little value women held in Colombian society thus making it easier for perpetrators to dehumanize and enact intimate and familial violence on them. The TruthIs report provides insight that before the conflict these girls and women had already been reduced to public commodities instead of dignified humans. Sexual violence was already systematically being practiced by perpetrators who exploited the physical and bodily autonomy of women:
[…] “antes de llegar los paramilitares, los ricos compraban a las niñas, la gente que tenía plata compraba a las niñas a sus padres: dos, tres vacas; tres, cuatro, diez mil pesos por una niña, y entonces se la llevaban a vivir uno, dos meses, y ahí la dejaban y salían y compraban otra.” (Narrativa de líder de Córdoba-68).
[…] “before the paramilitaries arrived, the rich people bought girls, those who had money bought the girls from their parents: two, three cows or three, four, ten thousand pesos for a girl. They took her to live with them for one or two months. They would leave her there and go out and buy another one.” (Narrative of a leader from Córdoba-68)
Ultimately, the qualitative research provided in the report demonstrated the extent of the normalization of violence in communities that would later be appropriated by various armed actors to use women as pawns for dominance.
Women’s experiences in the armed conflict
The TruthIs report highlights that the larger struggle during the armed conflict is impossible to understand without understanding how women experienced gender-based violence, a reality supported by the Constitutional Court’s report that sexual violence was a ‘systematic, habitual and generalized practice’ appropriated by all armed groups in the Colombian conflict. Estimates include that armed groups were responsible for the rape of 12,809 women, the forced prostitution of 1,575, the forced pregnancies of 4,415 women, and the forced abortions of 1,810 women. Both the falsehood of security and the unstable security vanished leaving only extreme direct violence, a reality that became unavoidable from the youngest child to elderly mothers. This new milieu instilled fear that did not allow them to live their lives as they had before, new biopolitics was being forcibly instilled in communities across Colombia.
“Mi mamá no me hizo fiesta de quince porque decía que eso era darles aviso a los hombres armados de que ya se lo podían comer a uno.”36
“My mother didn’t throw me a quinceañera because she said that would be a warning to the armed men that they could have me. “36
The TruthIs report highlighted how Afro-descendant and Indigenous women were disproportionately impacted not only because of the regions in which they live but the many dimensions of discrimination that they face. And so, Colombia’s history with slavery and oppression of bodies continued to burden those who have historically been disregarded. Sexual violence was used to control and dominate physically, culturally, economically, and territory for the larger perceived purpose of the conflict. For example, guerrillas have used sexual violence in the forced recruitment of girls as combatants, girls as sex slaves, and as payment to protect other family members.
“Ya el pensamiento era de oder que la mujer conquistara al que tiene el poder…cuando empezaron a llegar los grupos armados, más que todo los paramilitares y los soldados…ya no se buscaba marido por amor sino alguien que nos protegiera”. 38
“The idea was that the woman should conquer the one in power…when the armed groups began to arrive, especially the paramilitaries and the soldiers…they were no longer looked for a husband for love, but for someone who would protect us. “38
State Security Forces’ have been distinctively damaging as the civilian population has no mechanism for justice. These militias’ essential position is to protect and support civilians’ rights to a life free of violence. However, as described by many victims, these entities often took advantage of the chaos to extend harm on vulnerable populations exercising violence against women on a mass scale. Unlike FARC or ELN groups targeted by the government, the State Security Forces were never held accountable for their actions since they operated as the rule of law in these sometimes remote areas. The impunity surrounding State Security Forces has protected many individuals and battalions from being held accountable for the crimes committed against their civilians.
The significance of a report like TruthIS being presented to the Truth Commission
It’s innovative, it highlights not only the perseverance of women’s resistance but how women in these communities utilized their pain and emotions to contribute to the peace process. This report refutes the machismo mindset, that normalizes victim-blaming, and minimizes the suffering of women instead highlighting how women can strengthen peacebuilding efforts.
It’s intentional, the report is taking advantage of the gender provisions in order to create a historical record nationally and internationally affirming the violence committed against women in the context of the armed conflict. It demonstrates how important it is for women to be integrated into the peacebuilding process since their participation also promotes gendered provisions. The regional focus on the Pacific Coast is to emphasize that Afro-descendant and Indigenous women were impacted in specific and targeted ways.
It’s an example, using testimony as an integral component in communicating the differentiated impact the internal conflict had on women. These individuals’ experiences centered on sexual and physical violence but also brought to light how women experienced forced disappearances, forced displacement, forced recruitment, and psychological trauma. The report also includes the experiences of trans individuals and those with different sexualities which as previously discussed are realities that are often overshadowed.
The struggle to end sexual violence continues
While this report is an exceptional demonstration of how far women’s engagement has come in terms of their healing, liberation, and role in the peace process, it can’t begin to entirely eclipse the intricacies of trauma that remains in the wake of the armed conflict. The recent webinar hosted by Oxfam, WOLA, and the Latin America Working Group provided space for women to share in their own words how they experienced violence and the intergenerational trauma felt in their families and communities. The sheer courage displayed moving and the overall message that the fear and continued instability are incredibly prevalent. The women shared a general desire for their daughters and sons to live in reality free of violence, a dream that seems almost unattainable in the current reality.
Presently, the Pacific Coast home to the Cauca and Cordóba departments continue to be disproportionately impacted by violence against women as the demobilization of guerrillas and the increase of militarization in areas previously abandoned by the state has maintained the armed conflict’s violence continuum as young women are still forced into armed prostitution and sexual abuse. Nationally, UN Women reported that 37% of women in Colombia will experience physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence at least once in their lifetime, and over 50% of Colombian men surveyed for a 2010 UN study admitted to abusing their female partners. This violence has continued to be exacerbated following COVID-19 the FISCALIA reported 60.581 cases of domestic violence across the country.
Women’s Resistance
The silencing of women’s voices and experiences has been constant before, during, and after Colombia’s armed conflict. However, new forms of advocacy and resistance have forced attention onto wounds that many responsible and complacent actors would rather ignore. Of these actors, the Colombian state should grant a public apology to victims of sexual violence experienced by girls, women, and those with different sexual orientations and gender identities. In addition, the international community should hold the Colombian state accountable for implementing the gender provisions of the 2016 Peace Accord that focus on women’s rights, gender, and their social and political participation. Ultimately, the resistance of female victims and community non-profits such as Casa de la Mujer is integral in pushing forward narratives deserving of public attention and justice. Therefore, defending and amplifying the voices and experiences of women that have endured Colombia’s armed conflict is not only a peace mechanism but an active step towards protecting women’s dignity and autonomy.
“Bueno yo pienso que al principio pues no éramos visibles, éramos invisibles para todo el mundo porque la mujer no se tenía en cuenta para nada, pero a raíz de todo lo que nos pasó yo creo que reaccionamos y dijimos que Dios nos dejó por algo, y yo pienso que tenemos que dejar una huella de bien en la comunidad, en la sociedad, en nuestra familia, que nos empoderemos en muchos espacios y en muchas cosas. Ver tantas mujeres asesinadas, desaparecidas y uno que ha logrado superar esas cosas es una razón para que otras mujeres vivan a través de nuestra experiencia, que se den cuenta [de] que sí vale la pena luchar y cambiar este país. Los grupos, fundaciones y todo eso nos ayudan a superarnos emocional y económicamente, y si lo hacemos unidas, mejor.” (Narrativa de mujer del Meta-143).
“Well, I think that at the beginning, we were not visible. We were invisible to everyone women were not taken into account at all. But as a result of everything that happened to us, I think we reacted, and we said that God left us for something, and I think that we have to leave a mark of good in the community, in society, in our families, and our world. We empower ourselves in many spaces and in many things. Seeing so many women murdered, disappeared, and even one woman who has managed to overcome these despite it all is a reason for all of us to overcome. It is a reason for other women to live despite our experiences, to realize so that they realize [that] it is worth fighting and changing this country. The groups, foundations, and all that help us overcome ourselves emotionally and economically and help us better ourselves emotionally and financially, and if we do it united, all the better.” (Narrative of a woman from Meta-143)
Many women and their organizations across Colombia have come together to document their own experiences with violence during the country’s internal armed conflict, share their testimonies, offer an analysis of the structural roots of violence against women in a patriarchal society, and provide recommendations to ensure such violence does not recur. These efforts resulted in a published report—by Colombian feminist organization Casa de la Mujer, in colloboration with local organizations in Cauca, Córdoba, and Meta departments—entitled “TruthIs: Politicizing Women’s Pain and Emotions.”
These women’s organizations submitted their report to Colombia’s Truth Commission, which was created in the historic 2016 Peace Accord to uncover the truth about human rights violations during the conflict, promote recognition of the victims and the responsibilities of those in the conflict, and foster coexistence in order to ensure such violence is not repeated. The report discusses the importance of politicizing women’s pain and emotions as a means to raise public awareness about the conflict’s violence against women and provide guarantees these harmful acts will not be repeated. It contains chapters dedicated to the Meta, Córdoba, and Cauca departments that outline women’s rights before armed actors arrived, women’s experiences after they arrived, the acts of violence committed against women, women’s emotions and resistance, and the patriarchal logic and practices of violence perpetrated against women.
The report’s recommendations are vital to addressing all forms of violence against women and ensuring a strong gender approach for understanding the conflict and building lasting peace. Therefore, delivering the report to the Truth Commission is important because it highlights the trailblazing gender provisions in the Peace Accord and urges they be used as mechanisms for justice.
The women’s organizations call on the international community to:
Urge the Colombian state to advance the integral implementation of the Peace Accord, in particular with regard to women’s and a gender perspective, demilitarize the response to social protest, and guarantee women’s right to social and political participation;
Support the design and implementation of programs and actions aimed at guaranteeing the non-repetition of acts of violence experienced by women;
Accompany the process of widely distributing the Truth Commission’s final report when it is published in mid-2022;
Consistently follow-up, through international monitoring, on the implementation of the Truth Commission’s recommendations for coexistence and non-repetition;
Support peacebuilding initiatives led by civil society organizations, especially those led by women.
Below you will find an unofficial translation of a summary of the report.
TruthIs: Politicizing Women’s Pain and Emotions
To guarantee acts of violence perpetrated against women are not repeated, it is necessary to carry out initiatives for coexistence, reconciliation, and peacebuilding. These initiatives require the inevitable ethical and political responsibilities of explaining how the violence of Colombia’s internal armed conflict, as well as overarching patriarchal and capitalist ideologies, have caused suffering for women. With these responsibilities in mind, the truth narrated by women must contribute to a recognition by Colombian society that their lives are valuable and that this violence against women is a societal concern. Addressing violence against women at the societal level serves as a step towards healing for women victims of the armed conflict. To politicize the pain and emotions of women is to recognize, understand, and explain the suffering of women; it is accepting that the loss of their lives has not been considered a reason for social or collective mourning, given the unequal distribution of suffering in which women’s pain has not been and is not socially recognized or amplified (Butler, 2006, p. 16).
Therefore, we hope that our report “TruthIs: Politicizing Women’s Pain and Emotions” will contribute to politicizing both the roots of the patriarchy and the socio-political structures in which we live. We also strive to explain why some lives are more protected than others and why some are more exposed to violence and more susceptible to suffering. Additionally, we also explore why some women manage to process and give a collective and political meaning to their pain through forms of resistance. For example, they accompany other women, promote organizing among women, and demand the building of a society where women are equal and have the same opportunities as men, free from violence.
The report contains a prologue that discusses the importance of politicizing women’s pain and emotions as a means to raise public awareness, ensure these harmful acts are not repeated, and build lasting peace. The report’s introduction presents the principles, methodology, purpose, and the conceptual elements that guide the information collection and its subsequent analysis. The report then focuses on three of Colombia’s departments: Meta, Córdoba, and Cauca. Each of these chapters addresses women’s rights before armed actors arrived, women’s experiences after armed actors arrived, the acts of violence committed against women, women’s emotions and resistance, and the patriarchal logic and practices of violence perpetrated against women. Additionally, each chapter includes the most relevant dynamics of the armed conflict that help explain the intersection and intertwining of the violence women experienced.
The last chapter analyzes the patriarchal ideology of violence used against women and its expansion, its continuities and discontinuities, and its displacement from private life to the public realm and from the public realm to the private sphere. It includes the practices, stereotypes, and evaluations about women and feminized bodies. The chapter ends with recommendations to Colombia’s Truth Commission to guarantee non-repetition and coexistence.
Women victims from the following groups and regions present recommendations that they hope will contribute to the Truth Commission’s work, and ultimately contribute to responding to the expectations and needs of women victims:
Women from Caldono, Santander de Quilichao, Lorica, Montería, Tierralta, Valencia, and Granada.
The Association of Women of Ariari- Association of Women Building Development for the Region of Ariari Asomuariari (Asociación De Mujeres Construyendo Desarrollo para la Región del Ariari, Asomuariari).
The Association of Victims of the Internal Armed Conflict of Lorica (Asociación de Víctimas por el conflicto armado interno de Lorica, Asovilor).
Foundation for Social Development and Agricultural Research (Fundación para el Desarrollo Social y la Investigación Agrícola, Fundesia).
Network of Social Organizations of Communal and Community Women of Monteria (Red de Organizaciones Sociales de mujeres, Rosmuc).
With regard to interpreting the violent acts against women during the internal armed conflict, we suggest that the Truth Commission:
Take into account the existing relationships among armed conflict, patriarchy, and capitalism, and how these contribute to violence against women; that is, creating cartographies that demonstrate the intersection of structural violence with the violence experienced by women because they are women, in all their diverse identities;
Recognize that violence against women is fundamental to the mapping of geographies of power, control, and masculinized “disciplining” of women’s bodies and territories;
Highlight the importance of deconstructing the patriarchal and capitalist ideologies that place women’s lives in a place of precariousness that is exacerbated within a scenario of armed confrontation;
Recognize women as holders of rights, in all their diverse identities; implying that the recommendations should ensure that the state guarantee enabling conditions for the effective enjoyment of rights for all women, without any distinction whatsoever. Additionally, it means changing the perspective that all women have the same needs, instead understanding that women victims have individual experiences and rights, allowing them to demand that the state comply with its constitutional and internationally recognized responsibilities.
In order to politicize women’s pain and emotions, we suggest the Truth Commission give a privileged place in its report for women’s pain and emotions. Such pain and emotions are linked to the ruthless exercise of power by men—armed and unarmed—over women, the violence against them, and the dispute over their bodies, their territory.
Therefore, we suggest the Truth Commission urge the Colombian state to:
Design and agree on national and territorial plans for the psychosocial accompaniment of victims by women’s and victims’ organizations and provide the needed economic and professional resources. Plans should emphasize strategies that focus on women’s pain and care for the body, promoting reflection on the deprivatization of pain, self-care, self-esteem, and autonomy in all their diverse identities. The national and territorial plans should include ancestral knowledge and practices of care and self-care;
Design, coordinate, and implement communication, cultural, and educational strategies that transform images and stereotypes that uplift the value, life, and dignity of women in all their diverse identities;
Build monuments and public parks to honor the memory of women victims and declare sites linked to the violence committed against women during the armed conflict as spaces of memory (after putting together an inventory of sites in consultation with women’s organizations);
Recognize the responsibility of the state, armed actors, and civil society organizations in the territories for the violence committed against women and for the pain caused because they did nothing to stop, denounce, investigate, and punish this violence. They failed to protect women;
Apologize to the victims of sexual violence, especially women and girls, and other people of different sexual orientations and different gender identities for the grave violations committed against them.
In regard to guarantees for non-repetition and reconciliation, we suggest the Colombian Truth Commission:
Immediately comply with the Peace Accord and, in particular, with measures focused on women’s rights and a gender perspective;
Design and implement programs and actions that help guarantee non-repetition. They should aim to recognize the experiences and authority of women, as well as remove the structural causes of oppression and subordination, injustices and exclusions, and the violence women experience in public and private spheres;
Give full support and legitimacy to the work of individuals, institutions, and organizations that defend women’s human rights, feminist organizations, and victims’ organizations;
Provide support to collective memory initiatives proposed by local institutions, women’s organizations, and communities affected by severe violations of women’s human rights—in all their diverse identities—and international humanitarian law;
Design, coordinate, and implement, in public and private educational centers, a pedagogy for reconciliation based on the recognition of and respect for otherness, dialogue as an option for dealing with public and private conflicts, solidarity and cooperation, as well as the need to legitimize and grant authority to the experience of women in all their diverse identities. The construction of peace and reconciliation requires the transformation of social norms and the material and symbolic elements that reproduce war, discrimination, and privileges for political, economic, social, ethnic, and sexual reasons;
Guarantee the equal participation of women in all their diverse identities in the mechanisms adopted to follow up on the implementation of the Truth Commission’s recommendations.
We call upon the international community to:
Urge the Colombian state to advance the integral implementation of the Peace Accord, in particular with regard to women’s rights and a gender perspective, demilitarize the response to social protest, and guarantee women’s right to social and political participation.
Support the design and implementation of programs and actions aimed at guaranteeing the non-repetition of acts of violence experienced by women;
Accompany the process of widely distributing the Truth Commission’s final report when it is published in mid-2022.
Consistently follow-up, through international monitoring, on the implementation of the Truth Commission’s recommendations for coexistence and non-repetition.
Support peacebuilding initiatives led by civil society organizations, especially those led by women.
On August 26, the United Nations Security Council received a statement, signed by WOLA and a wide array of Colombian and international organizations, advising the council’s members to ensure the complete implementation of the final peace accord signed by the Colombian State and the FARC.
The statement underscores the Colombian government’s lack of political will to comprehensively fulfill the final peace accord. This weak approach has resulted in significant delays in achieving the accord’s goals of comprehensive rural reform, political participation, substitution of illicit crops, and dismantling of organized crime.
To enable the full implementation of the final peace accord, the organizations recommend:
A security and vigilance plan that guarantees the lives and physical integrity of individuals undergoing reintegration and the victims of the armed conflict.
Continued implementation of the differentiated gender focus included in the final peace accord.
Verification of Resolution 2532 that calls on those still armed to abide by a multilateral ceasefire that provides humanitarian relief to violently targeted rural, ethnic communities.
You can read the original, Spanish statement here.
The English text is below:
The organizations and platforms signed would like to express our gratitude to the United Nations, Secretary-General António Guterres, countries belonging to the Security Council, and the Verification Mission on Colombia for supporting the Final Peace Accord for the Termination of the Conflict and the Construction of a Stable and Lasting Peace, signed November 2016, and for verifying its implementation, especially points 3.2 and 3.4 which concern the End of the Armed Conflict.
We recognize that the disarmament of the FARC’s former guerilla and the more than 13 thousand people currently undergoing the reintegration process are important steps forward. However, three and a half years have passed since the start of the final accord’s implementation, and four months since the official declaration of the social emergency caused by the pandemic. We have observed with profound concern the national government’s lack of political will to implement the peace accord. We can support this claim with the testimonies of communities and national and international verification reports. We have confirmed that most ex-combatants do not have land to work on and significant delays in the relative points of Comprehensive Rural Reform (part 1), political participation (part 2), the dismantling of organized crime (part 3), the substitution of illicit crops (part 4) and the institutional conditions that guarantee the implementation and monitoring of the accord (part 6).
Militarized presence in the territories fails to secure the life and liberties of citizens and peace. In Colombia, since the signing of the final peace accord and up until July 15, 2020, 971 social leaders and 215 individuals undergoing the reintegration process have been assassinated in these militarized zones. In other zones with territorial perimeter controls, criminality and the power of various armed groups has increased.
We advocate for respecting and fully implementing the final peace accord signed by the Colombian State and the FARC; the adoption of effective measures that guarantee reintegration; the due functioning of the agreed instances in the agreement like the CSIVI, which monitor implementation and the security guarantees of individuals undergoing reintegration; and the National Security Guarantees Commission, for the full completion of the mandate concerning the dismantlement of groups and conduct that threaten the country’s social leaders.
With the purpose of completely fulfilling the final peace accord and recognizing the important monitoring task that the Verification Mission–created by the UN Security Council–has accomplished for Colombia, we solicit the renovation of the mandate and the explicit inclusion of:
1) Verifying the fulfillment of sanctions by the Peace Tribunal of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) for all parties, which is included in part 5.1.2, numeral 53 d) of the final accord. The sites where sanctions will be implemented, in addition to the security and vigilance plan that guarantees the lives and physical integrity of the sanctioned and the victims of these territories, needs to be verified.
2) Monitoring the implementation of the differentiated gender dimension of the final peace accord, which is a recognized achievement, but also one that requires additional human and financial resources. It needs continuous precision and verification processes in its implementation with regard to commitments to women and ethnic peoples.
3) Supporting and possibly verifying Resolution 2532 of July 1, 2020 of the UN Security Council, and to invite the Colombian government and all who still find themselves armed to welcome the cease fire as an imperative, ethical need that will secure the signed peace process and provide humanitarian relief to rural communities violently targeted by multiple groups. The final peace accord established its centrality in the victims. Therefore, creating an enabling environment for peace is fundamental to providing a suitable response to the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and advancing in the achievement of a complete peace.
Colombia has a social movement shaped by people that have contributed to the construction of peace. We have immense gratitude for the international community, because we have unitedly advocated for negotiated ends to armed conflict, the adoption of mechanisms for judicial placement of various armed groups, and an impetus for humanitarian initiatives as forms of resolving our conflicts and reconstructing a democratic society in a socially and environmentally conscious state of law.
We’re pleased to share video of last Tuesday’s two-panel discussion of the state of Colombia’s peace accord implementation. The first panel presents the principal findings of the fourth comprehensive report on the peace accord by Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame. The second includes insights from experts on women’s rights, gender, and LGBT+ provisions.
This video does not include the translators’ track: speakers choose the language in which they prefer to speak. The first panel is in English, the second is in Spanish.
Two panels, hosted by WOLA: a presentation of the latest Kroc Institute report on accord implementation, and a discussion with women, Afro-Descendant, indigenous, and LGBT+ leaders.
The latest pandemic human rights update from the non-governmental platform looks at recent allegations of sexual abuse by military personnel around the country.
Saura and Johana tell how they came back to their lands in Catatumbo and how, after subscribing to the National Comprehensive Program for the Substitution of Illicit Crops (PNIS), they began to grow food where there were once coca crops.
