Posted: March 10, 2010
By: Virginia Bouvier

Sexual violence has been part of Colombia’s repertoire of violence for decades. This past week, I have been in Colombia meeting with a range of civil society actors. I used the upcoming occasion of International Women’s Day to invite a group of scholars and activists working on the issue of violence against women to meet with me on Monday, March 2, to discuss their current activities in Colombia. We needed to reschedule at the last minute, because a transportation strike shut down much of Bogota, including the University of the Andes, where we were supposed to meet.

Despite these logistical challenges, women representing over a dozen organizations gathered at the offices of the Project Counseling Services early the next morning. The group included women of both older and younger generations who, from distinct backgrounds (forensic anthropology, political science, law, anthropology, gender studies, forensic medicine, and advocacy) work to document, analyze, and prevent violence against women, and improve women’s rights and access to justice in Colombia.

María Eugenia Sánchez Gomez, from the Casa de la Mujer, underscored the continuum of different forms of violence against women. Her organization celebrates 29 years of existence this year and seeks to strengthen organizations of women victims, and to find individual, collective and political solutions to the issue of violence against women.

The women at the meeting discussed the particular challenges of documenting and obtaining testimonies of sexual violence in the context of Colombia’s ongoing conflict. The tremendous impunity with which gender-based violence is enacted exacerbates the considerable (and often justifiable) fear of repercussions for those who denounce sexual violence.

Silvia Otero from the Jesuit think-tank, Centro de Investigación y Educación Popular (CINEP), noted that the long-term nature of the conflict and the absence of a gender perspective constrain the basic tools, protocols, capacity, and evidence with which to prosecute cases of gender-based violence. The lack of a gender perspective within institutions is made worse by weak state capacities, and limited financial and human resources.

Participants in the Bogota meeting and their organizations have helped design and lobby for legislation to improve women’s rights, and are involved in monitoring compliance with these laws.  The Consultoria para los Derechos Humanos y Desplazamiento (CODHES), Sisma-Mujer, Corporación Humanas, Iniciativa de Mujeres por la Paz (IMP), Ruta Pacífica, Casa de la Mujer, Project Counseling Services and other groups have documented the difficulties female victims face in getting access to the justice system and several of them are pursuing a case before the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights at the Organization of American States.

Thanks to the efforts of women around the table, legislation for women in Colombia has improved in recent years, though implementation remains as the major challenge. Recent laws, including the decriminalization of abortion through a Constitutional Court ruling in 2006, law 1257 for a “life free of violence against women,” and “Auto 092” on the rights of displaced women in 2008 are important new tools to advance women’s protection. Women’s groups continue to lobby for, educate about, and build capacity for the implementation of these laws.

Many women’s groups in Colombia use the U.N. Security Council Resolutions relating to women’s roles in peacebuilding and peacemaking (resolutions 1325, 1820, and 1880 in particular) to educate the public about women’s contributions in this realm, to equip women to participate in future peace talks in Colombia, and to ensure women’s political representation in governance.

Many of the organizations represented at the meeting are working in the legal sphere to enhance accountability for violence against women, and are seeking to use the justice system to improve security and protection for women.

Yet the justice system has not generally been user-friendly for women. Luz Piedad Caicedo from Corporación Humanas found that in their efforts to seek legal channels to guarantee women’s rights, they had encountered the prejudices of male and female judges alike. Thus, the group initiated programs to document and analyze the stigmatization that accompanies gender-based violence, and to sensitize judges to better deal with victims of sexual violence. At least two other groups at the meeting, Corporación Sisma-Mujer and Iniciativa de Mujeres por la Paz (IMP), are also working with judges and magistrates. One researcher noted that although it was public knowledge that sexual violence occurred in many of Colombia’s most well-known massacres, in the public testimonies of the ex-paramilitaries known as “versiones libres,” it was not considered relevant to ask the defendants about sexual violence. “If it is not documented, there are no statistics. If there are no statistics, there is no violence, there is no conflict, it never happened,” said one participant.

Migdonia Rueda Bolanos noted that IMP was representing plaintiffs and designing legal strategies for more than 400 cases of sexual violence. Other groups have also filed and currently represent cases of sexual violence before the courts or provide legal support. The women discussed the high costs to women’s security of some of these legal processes. Since October 2009, five leaders of organizations that belong to national organizations monitoring Auto 092, including the Casa de la Mujer, Ruta Pacífica, and others, have been threatened, and they or their daughters have been physically and sexually assaulted for their work. “If this is happening in Bogota, how much more must it be happening in other parts of the country?” asked one participant.

Some researchers are working on gender-based violence from a public health perspective. Silvia Otero discussed a joint project of CINEP, the Universidad de los Andes and the Instituto Nacional de Medicina Legal y Ciencias Forenses (INML) to determine the factors most relevant to when and whether doctors and health professionals document and report sexual violence that occurs in the context of massacres.

Other women are working within the churches to address the problem of intrafamilial violence. Women religious, noted Norma Inés Bernal, often are called on to provide psychosocial services and spiritual accompaniment for the victims and survivors of sexual violence.

María Emma Wills, the head of the gender unit for the Historical Memory Commission (HMC), noted the tremendous variation and complexity that exists in the relationship between war and gender. Dr. Wills and researcher María Luisa Moreno discussed the toolkit that the HMC produced to assist communities affected by violence in recovering their history, and the HMC’s forthcoming report on gender and memories of war, funded by USIP.

Eliana Pinto Velásquez, a researcher from the HMC unit on “land and conflict,” described another report the HMC would be releasing later this year on methods of displacement in the Atlantic Coast region and the participation of women in ANUC, one of Colombia’s oldest peasant organizations. The women discussed the need for development alternatives and land reform. “Rural development is the basis for national sovereignty,” observed María Emma Wills. “We need to recognize the peasant as a political actor, not just as the subject of paternalism.”

Several of the organizations are monitoring and have followed the disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) process of recent years. Corporación Humanas and IMP have documented the negative impact of the demobilization of ex-combatants on the security of women in the receiving communities in different regions of Colombia. Mariana Díaz Kraus, from Fundación Ideas para la Paz (FIP), discussed FIP’s work on gender and the DDR process in Colombia, including a seminar conducted jointly with USIP last fall on that topic. Díaz noted the continued absence of a gender-differentiated approach in the current program. “The government’s approach is to mainstream gender in the programs, but this has meant that women are included everywhere and nowhere.” 

Participants in the meeting discussed more broadly the lack of public debate on the issue of demobilization and reintegration, and the heightened activity of paramilitary groups in many of the regions. María Eugenia Vásquez, a member of the Women and Armed Conflict Working Group, discussed her research on the Atlantic Coast and the underlying assumptions of current programs that stigmatize ex-combatants. Several of those present observed that many ex-combatants face death threats and some have been killed; that some government offices for reintegration have been closed down; that ex-combatants complain that promised resources have not been forthcoming; and that the pressures for recidivism are strong.

A number of young scholars discussed their research. Katia Orteaga Villanueva, from the School of Gender Studies at the National University, discussed her comparative case studies on the use of gendered violence as a weapon of war in Darfur and Colombia. She underscored the research challenges she faces, particularly the need to avoid re-victimizing survivors of sexual violence through interviewing.

July Milena Calderón Segura described research on forced prostitution that Corporación Sisma-Mujer is conducting in six municipalities of the Bajo Cauca Antioqueña. Death threats to the participants in the project last week prompted them to reevaluate the security needs and the sustainability of the project. The organization has also received death threats since last year from paramilitary groups. Ms. Calderón also discussed Sisma-Mujer’s recent publication about women in armed conflict, and current research on sexual violence among various indigenous groups in Colombia. The group discussed some of the challenges they face in their work, noting in particular the threats that face women who give testimony in the courts, particularly over questions of land, displacement, and human rights.

Nonetheless, the meeting ended with a certain optimism. Women´s strategies and lobbying not only target institutions but also seek to educate the public more broadly about the issue of violence against women. In this regard, they have had some successes in attaining greater media attention relating to problems of gender-based violence and gender discrimination. This discourse of women’s rights has created conditions that make prosecution of those responsible for such crimes increasingly possible. Likewise, social networks of women have a tremendous capacity for creating and supporting these agendas and addressing the structures that permit violence against women. There is today in Colombia a critical mass of women who have been well prepared intellectually to move forward an agenda in many spheres (legal, political, religious, medical, scholarly) to secure greater protections for women’s rights and greater accountability for violence against women. And the next generation of scholars has already begun to build on previous work to ensure continuity and advances in the years ahead.