human rights defenders | PBI Colombia (English)

The time has come for Colombia to support the efforts of women and others searching for victims of enforced disappearance. Women suffer very serious human rights violations while, individually or collectively, searching for loved ones, including sexual violence, kidnapping, privation of liberty, extortion, threats, and reprisals.

The leadership role is not recognized by society or even the Colombian state, which is often, “a spoke in the wheel” of compliance on existing laws relative to enforced disappearance. “In many cases, officials do not fulfill their job due to negligence, indifference and indolence,” say women searchers.

According to the Search Unit for Disappeared Persons (UBPD in Spanish), the armed conflict has generated over 99,000 disappeared persons in Colombia. According to the National Attorney General’s Office, 99% of cases of enforced disappearance remain in total impunity.

Continue reading Women Searching for Victims of Enforced Disappearance Await Dignity →

Two years ago, amid the upsurge of the pandemic caused by Covid-19, several Colombian ethnic and peasant communities, accompanied by the Commission for Justice and Peace (JyP), sent an open letter to President Iván Duque, requesting a Global Humanitarian Agreement [1]. The call included a cessation of hostilities and new peace talks that would include the multiple armed actors still present in the regions. Since then, over 160 communities, with support from the Catholic Church, [2] international entities [3] and civil society organizations, [4] have sent 57 open letters [5] with the same aim. There has been no response from the outgoing government.

The calls for a ceasefire come from communities who have yet to see any real improvements in their territories since the 2016 signature of the Peace Agreement between the Juan Manuel Santos administration and the FARC-EP. Valle del Cauca, Cauca, Chocó, and Putumayo, among others, are regions where PBI accompanies JyP and ethnic-territorial and peasant communities who are victims of the armed conflict. The state presence is mainly military in these communities and they continue to register intense waves of violence, including the murder of defenders, massacres [6], sexual violence, and forced displacement [7], among other serious human rights violations.

Amid socio-political violence, these community initiatives are still convinced that only through “respectful and honest dialogue and recognition from decisive actors will the territorial context of injustice and structural and historical exclusion be transformed into a new social-environmental pact for peace”. [8] To achieve this, over 160 community initiatives are calling for and implementing a Global Humanitarian Agreement throughout the country.

Danilo Rueda, a JyP coordinator that PBI has walked with for almost three decades, has dedicated his life to peacebuilding from the territories, supporting victims of the armed conflict, and making denouncements whenever their rights are brutally violated, while he himself has been a victim of serious attacks.[9] According to the human rights defender, recently chosen to be High Commissioner for Peace,[10] the Global Humanitarian Agreement seeks to end the armed violence in the territories and safeguard life and integrity in the communities, as well as of those party to the armed confrontations as military enemies.

With determination, Danilo has promoted the Global Humanitarian Agreement proposal to generate conditions for a Global Territorial Peace or Full Peace. This Full Peace signifies “the creation and disposition of a state and government that is open to talking, based on the nature and identity of each armed group, to reach a laying down of arms and the generation of agreements”. According to JyP, and the communities they accompany, to end the attacks and violence against women and to end the recruitment of youth, the call for a Global Humanitarian Agreement must be answered.

In the last 15 years, there have been two processes to lay down arms: one between the Álvaro Uribe Vélez administration and the United Self-defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) paramilitary in 2005 and another with the FARC-EP and Juan Manuel Santos administration in 2016. According to Danilo Rueda, lessons were learned from both processes on a diversity of issues, including what is known as transitional justice and the importance of truth. However, even more so, these experiences have shown the fragility of the signed agreements, characterized by a lack of guarantees for ex-combatants and the absence of an effective governmental response to the range of commitments it has taken on. This lack of response and fulfillment of commitments has Colombia “ad portas of initiating new cycles of violence, which already have very concrete manifestations in different territories”, reflects Danilo Rueda with concern. For the human rights defender, the only way to have responsible investment and confront the country’s nearly endemic corruption “is to achieve peace with the range of armed expressions that exist in Colombia today, on both urban and rural levels”. From the territory, the communities have already managed to generate spaces for the distension and differentiation between armed and civilian groups, which, to date, “have been relatively respected by diverse armed groups”.

Nevertheless, five years into the Peace Agreement and with continues efforts to promote the Global Humanitarian Agreement, life in the territories continues to be marked by violence. From Cacarica, in the north of Chocó, the Afro-Colombian leaders Ana de Carmen Martín and John Jairo Mena, both members of the Association of Communities of Self-determination, Life, and Dignity (CAVIDA), speak with conviction, their search is for a dignified life.

For Ana de Carmen Martín it is clear that if the Global Humanitarian Agreement is not implemented “the war will continue”. John Jairo Mena hopes that the new government signifies a possibility for change and a promotion of the proposal for a Global Humanitarian Agreement so that peasants, mestizos, Indigenous, and Black peoples can enjoy their territories.

This is no different from the experience in the Perla Amazónica Peasant Reserve Area, in the south of the country, in Putumayo. From this beautiful Amazonian territory, the emblematic leader Jani Silva, president of the Association for Holistic Sustainable Development – Perla Amazónica (ADISPA), defends peace, life, the territory, and its biodiversity. This has cost her numerous forced displacements and serious threats. Jani is also concerned about the Peace Agreement’s lack of implementation and, therefore, a reconfiguration of the armed conflict. “As a woman and victim of the conflict, I am worried about the conflict’s intensification, and that our work on environmental issues, with a gender perspective, is impacted by the clashes between groups”.

A high-level militarization of the regions—as the state’s sole response to date—in addition to major offensive strikes such as the aerial bombings and flashy attention-grabbing arrests, are far from fulfilling the communities’ repeated calls for peace. To respect the lives of the civilian population and communities in the regions, for full peace with a territorial perspective, the proposal from the regions must be heard, a cry for this war to end. Beyond the Peace Agreement, a Global Humanitarian Agreement is needed.