Colombian women: survival amidst war. (National Contexts).

"The women from Pavarando want and need to raise our voices throughout our country and around the world to share what we have been living through for the past nine months and to present our proposals to transform and to help others transform this situation.

"Before, we didn't live amid violence. We were very poor, but we made a living from agriculture, fishing and raising animals in 49 communities along the Atrato River in the States of Choco and Antioquia. We had tools, medicine; we bought what we needed.

"When the war got worse, the economic blockade began, and we were not allowed to leave the area even to buy food. There is interest in our land because of the canal [the Inter-Oceanic Canal to the Pacific] and because of the resources in our territory [minerals and natural resources]. Then the bombings from the helicopters began, and we were not fighting with anyone. We had to flee with our children, leave everything behind and hide for several days in the mountains, in the jungle.

"The women who were caught were raped, mutilated and killed. They threatened nursing mothers to make us leave our homes. We had go to the town of Mutata, walking for two weeks or more through the mountains. Many of us lost contact with family members. We never saw them again. We have no idea what happened to them.

"Along the way there were births, and the community helped the elderly and those who got sick. There was a lot of solidarity; whatever one person found to eat, they shared.

"In Pavarando, the government is indifferent to our needs; they assure food supplies for children, the elderly and nursing women, but the others have been without food for two weeks.

"Now, we are totally dependent; we cannot find work, and we have no money even to buy the basics ..."

   From the Statement of the Rural
   Women of 49 Displaced Communities
   in the town of Pavarando, in
   Colombia's Uraba region. In 1997,
   there were more 6,000 displaced
   persons in this area. (1)

Colombia is the port of entry to South America. It has beautiful coasts and beaches on both the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans, a range of climates and scenery, dramatic mountains and valleys, imposing rivers, and a variety of animal, vegetable and mineral resources.

In the South is the Amazon Jungle, "the lungs of the world." Home to 40 million inhabitants, our country has diverse ecosystems and cultures. There are 23 indigenous cultures in Colombia and a population full of creativity, with different sorts of community organizations and thousands of rebuilding projects throughout the country. However, our country also is suffering from an armed conflict that has lasted now for almost 50 years. This violence permeates both rural and urban territories; it affects our daily life, the social fabric, our bodies, our minds and our souls.

Currently, some politicians in our country and in the international arena are trying to sell us the idea that all-out war is the way to change once and for all this history of violence in Colombia. In this article, I want to draw attention not only to the situation of women in the midst of the war, but also to the fact that the women's movement in Colombia does not believe that war is an option, an end that justifies the means. We do not believe that more violence is best for our country, nor for the rest of the world. Many women and men in Colombia have joined the struggle against arms, militarism and authoritarianism, taking an ethical position of non-violence that calls for the negotiated settlement of the conflict.

In Colombia, there is a complex humanitarian crisis because the different actors of the war do not respect international human rights law. This crisis directly affects the civilian population and is reflected in the high rates of forced displacement. In the past ten years, more than 2,200,000 people have been displaced because of the war, most of them (70%) women and children. Over half of all the displaced women (51%) are heads-of-household.

According to the representative of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees: "The current situation of displacement because of the violence in Colombia is a humanitarian catastrophe." Colombia is one of the highest-ranked countries in the world for size of displaced populations, along with Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Sudan and Angola. (2)

Driven at gunpoint from their rural communities, the displaced flee to the cities and the suburbs, where they live in precarious situations, barely surviving, unaware of their basic rights, without support from a state of which they do not feel a part, and in a fragmented society, pressured by violence and fear.

In addition to the threat of forced displacement, the population of Colombia faces other fears: 80% of all those killed in the war are civilians, assassinated in their homes, at work, or in the streets. There are some 3,000 kidnappings every year, and over the past two decades, 4,500 people have been "disappeared." According to human rights organizations, 73% of the human rights violations are caused by paramilitary groups, 22% by guerrilla groups and 5% by state forces.

The armed conflict in Colombian cities has dramatically increased. While the rural areas were previously the hardest hit, now the war has moved to the urban areas where 70% of the population live, especially the marginalized neighborhoods. Diverse forms of violence overlap in this urban armed conflict, not only politically-motivated violence. Nonetheless, the significant impact of the range of violences perpetrated within urban conflicts has not yet been acknowledged in analyses of the Colombian armed conflict.

In Colombian cities, the urban armed conflict has worsened due to the pervasive presence of paramilitary and guerrilla ideologies and actions. Delinquent gangs have reorganized under the control or influence of the paramilitaries or the guerrillas.

Today, it appears that the paramilitary factions propose to win the war in the cities with the help of these gangs. The network that has been developed among gangs, paramilitaries, guerrillas and militias complicates not only our analyses of the situation but the very reality. We are witnessing the transformation of city neighborhoods into battlefields and a no-man's-land where the inhabitants live in fear, impotent in the face of the urban conflict.

The armed actors of all the factions control not only the physical territory, but the daily life, the feelings and even the bodies of women. They are the law that rules everything, even interpersonal relationships. There are numerous examples of this reality and the effect it has on women's' lives:

--Family ties. Women experience this war as a personal drama because their sons, brothers or other relatives often are involved in one of these armed groups. This situation fills them with feelings of impotence, anger and fear. As the displaced women in Pavarando explained: "No mother wants bad things for her sons and daughters. We have them, but we don't know where they will go; they are free. The paramilitaries, the guerrillas, the army have been born of us; we don't want our children to be in gangs or to be killed or disappeared. We want our children to live." (3)

--Rape and sexual harassment. Women of all ages have been sexually assaulted by different armed groups. Women have been turned into war booty: they are the prize for the strongest competitor or the instrument for punishing the loser. (This is evident when rape is used as a form of provocation or to settle scores with the enemy.) Women who try to organize protests are threatened with rape.

--Prohibitions regarding style of dress. In some neighborhoods in Medellin, women are compelled to dress according to a strict code. They are afraid that they might be attacked like the two young girls from the small town of El Santuario who had their stomachs burned by paramilitaries for having pierced belly buttons and wearing cropped tops with low-waisted trousers. (4)

--Prohibition against retrieving corpses, holding wakes and burying the dead. Observing these rituals implies you are on the opposite side from whomever was responsible for the killing.

--Restrictions in love and relationships. Women have been killed because they were girlfriends, friends or lovers of police, soldiers, guerrillas or paramilitaries. Others have been killed because they helped one side or the other. In the neighborhood of El Corazon in the city of Medellin, 15 women were killed in October 2001 for being girlfriends, wives or relatives of one armed group or another. These atrocities have also occurred in the city of Barrancabermeja and other parts of the country. Ironically, women also are threatened with death if they reject amorous advances.

--Payment of "vaccines" or taxes to armed groups. In the most extreme form, homes are taken over and turned into the armed group's center of operations.

--Impact on children. Children are being prevented from attending school due to the confrontations and establishment of territorial limits that keep them from their places of learning. In addition, children are affected by nervous illnesses and paranoia. According to Colombia's Ombudsperon, eight children die violent deaths every day; each year, some 100 children commit suicide, and 1,000 are killed in the armed conflict. (5)

--Mental health impact. The uncertain environment in the neighborhoods results in a permanent state of anxiety. The well-being of the inhabitants is affected profoundly by this uncertainty and the fear that a confrontation might occur at any moment.

--Loss of democracy. In the political arena, the armed groups impose candidates for public office in the neighborhoods and in the different communities under their control, whether in the countryside or the city, by way of fear or threat, which restricts participation in community groups and local actions. In the most recent parliamentary elections, paramilitary groups claimed to have won 35% of the seats in Congress.

--Loss of freedom of movement. The right to move about freely on the streets and in the neighborhoods has been restricted, resulting in loss of work because of the difficulties of moving from place to place. This situation also has affected women's participation in community organizations because many cannot travel from one neighborhood to another, either because a confrontation is underway or because they have been explicitly forbidden to leave their houses or their neighborhood. Nor can people from outside the neighborhood take part in community-based actions for fear of gun battles or being seen as interlopers by the armed groups. Organized activities in the community have had to be postponed or canceled. For example, in the city of Barrancabermeja, paramilitary groups have consistently threatened the women from the Organizacion Feminina Popular (Women's Grassroots Organization), and they completely destroyed one of the organization's branches which housed a daycare center and provided diverse services to the population.

--Increased poverty. The economy of war means more poor people and particularly more poor women. The feminization of poverty also exists in Colombia due to the overburdening of work responsibilities, higher unemployment and the elimination of all social programs that had been won by women's rights movements.

For these reasons, many women and men in Colombia believe that the violence and armed conflict imposed upon our country have driven us towards an uncontrollable war violating every human right. All of the armed actors ignore international human rights law and the great majority of the victims are civilians who are not aligned with one of the factions.

Women Mobilize for Peace

La Ruta Pacifica de las Mujeres (Women's Route Towards Peace) was formed in 1995 in response to the serious situations faced by women in the rural and urban zones of armed conflict: a range of violences that have been ignored and minimized in a country immured to massacres, where death is just an everyday occurrence. On November 25, 1996, La Ruta Pacifica brought together more than two thousand women in the first nationwide peace march.

Women traveled from all over Colombia to the Uraba region. From that moment on, La Ruta Pacifica continued organizing and working regularly as part of the movement for peace. Women from many different organizations and grassroots groups work with La Ruta Pacifica in a number of cities in 10 provinces of Colombia.

Through these collective efforts, La Ruta has managed to articulate a perspective on the relationship between domestic violence and the violence produced by the war in our country, making a political effort to denounce and draw attention to the diverse forms of violence exercised against women.

La Ruta strives for the negotiated settlement of the armed conflict in Colombia, working from a feminist perspective. We are pacifists: we are against war and for the construction of an ethic of non-violence. We work against the forces of violence to restore solidarity and kindness that will help us to sustain ourselves as individual human beings and as a group living life on the edge in the context of war. With our actions and our presence, we say NO to war: we tell the armed groups that they do not represent us. We say YES to a life of dignity, NO to indifference and NO to the complicity of forgetfulness.

To this end, we are developing a strategy of deconstructing the symbols that strengthen war, exclusion and extermination. We combat these forces with poetry, with the creation of new symbols, new language and new social practices that generate alternatives to militarization, arms stockpiling and the logic of dominion and exclusion which make a cult out of violence and weapons.

This is how the women of La Ruta Pacifica--together with other organizations in Colombia, such as Barrancabermeja's Organizacion Femenina Popular (Women's Grassroots Organization)--have constructed an alliance in order to express ourselves and mobilize as Women in Black, We wear mourning for all the crimes committed, for the different forms of violence that we are enduring in Colombia, and to express our profound rejection of the war. We thus take up the legacy of other pacifist women around the world who also dress in black and in silence to publicly oppose war and militarization in their countries: in Israel, Palestine, North America, Yugoslavia, Italy, Spain and elsewhere.

We use the symbolic image of a woven cloth: we weave to counteract the war; we weave solidarities, social fabric and ties of love. We weave memory in a country where forgetfulness and impunity rob us of our dignity, our value and self-respect as a society a little more every day.

For this reason, in all of our projects--productive, agro-ecological, folk art, creative or symbolic--we work with grief, past and present, accumulated as the result of so much unspoken violence, always threatening to repeat itself. We strive to rebuild and repair the social fabric and communities.

At the same time, we are trying to rebuild gender identities, working for more equitable relations between men and women, for a society where women and the feminine have a place in the world.

Our Perspectives on War and Peace

We are convinced that security and peace do not come from the power of arms but from the ability to engage in dialogue, from justice, from social and economic development, from social responsibility, from negotiation and inclusion. These are the tools that we can use to promote and express a model for co-existence that can transform our very culture, not only at the negotiation table, but in our everyday relationships. We believe that the war embodies the most extreme expressions of domination and power struggles. Our focus allows us to take a stand on war and violence in Colombia and around the world.

Applying our perspective to the global economic system, world politics and concepts of development, we perceive that all actions in the public sphere also have an impact on the private sphere. From this comprehensive perspective, we view capitalism, globalization, neoliberalism and the war as different sides of the same coin. We understand that, as products of capitalism, globalization and neo-liberalism are expressions of a system that, by its very nature, imposes domination and death and uses violence and war to resolve conflict.

As a result, we share the opinion of many national and international sectors that have rejected "Plan Colombia" proposed by the United States to bolster the fight against drug trafficking. Approximately 80% of the US$1.5 billion that the United States has committed through this initiative is earmarked for the armed forces and the destruction of coca cultivation. It is clear to us that this plan favors a war-mongering and militaristic logic to the detriment of a true understanding of the diverse problems in Colombia. More recently, the U.S. has sought formal recognition that the Plan also address the counter-insurgency struggle. The implementation of this initiative has increased human rights violations against the civilian population, generating new ingredients in the Colombian conflict.

However, we welcome the international community's economic and political support for development projects that strengthen civil society initiatives. The role of the international community is increasingly necessary in order to pressure the Colombian State to implement changes that will bring us closer to social justice and a democratic state that can pursue political negotiations to end the armed conflict. The support of the international community is also invaluable for stopping the increase in human rights violations and putting an end to the humanitarian crisis in Colombia.

In this respect, La Ruta Pacifica has undertaken the task of forging an international network of women, people and organizations that support the initiatives of women and civil society in favor of a political negotiation of the armed conflict and that share in efforts of solidarity with women and men from other countries, in order to counteract the arms race, militarism and war, worldwide.

Notes

(1.) From the unpublished declarations and documents of La Ruta Pacifica de las Mujeres.

(2.) El Colombiano, December 6, 2001.

(3.) From the "Statement of the Rural Women of 49 Displaced Communities in the town of Pavarando, in Colombia's Uraba region, 1997," in the unpublished declarations and documents of La Ruta Pacifica de las Mujeres.

(4.) El Tiempo, November 24, 2001.

(5.) El Tiempo, March 20, 2002.

Women in Situations of Armed Conflict

Women and children are generally most affected during times of conflict. During wartime, women and children are at particular risk of human rights abuses because of their lack of status in most societies. Such abuses include sexual and gender-based violence, sexual exploitation and recruitment as soldiers. Women are also disproportionately affected by lack of basic services endemic to conflict and displacement--such as adequate medical care, nutrition, sanitation and shelter--due to discrimination and their own powerlessness. Displaced and refugee women and girls, elderly women, women heads of household and women held in detention and detention-like conditions are more vulnerable to the impact of conflict.

There are 30 countries and areas in conflict and post-conflict situations, including: Afghanistan, Algeria, Angola, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bougainville, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chechnya, Colombia, Cyprus, Democratic Republic of Congo, East Timor, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Georgia, Guatemala, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, India, Israel, Kosovo, Liberia, Pakistan, Palestine, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Tajikistan, Western Sahara.

There are UN Peacekeeping Operations in 15 of the above countries and UN Political and Peace Building missions in 12, but only three of the these UN peacekeeping operations have gender advisers (Sierra Leone, East Timor and Democratic Republic of Congo.)

Women Serving in Civil and Military Operations 

Women account for 4% of the police, 3% of the military. There are no women in the UN military peacekeeping missions in Afghanistan, Burundi, Cambodia, Golan Heights, Liberia or Tajikistan.

Women in Conflict and Post-Conflict Situations

Sexualized Violence

Rwanda: Approximately 500,000 women were raped during the 1994 genocide, and an estimated 5,000 pregnancies resulted from those rapes.

Sierra Leone: Over 50% of women experienced some form of sexualized violence during conflict in 1999.

Bosnia: An estimated 20,000 to 50,000 women were raped during five months of conflict in 1992.

Girls in War

Sierra Leone: Of an estimated 4,500 children abducted following the 1999 invasion of the capital, Freetown, 60% were girls, the majority of whom suffered repeated acts of sexual violence.

Displacement

Worldwide: Approximately 40 million people have fled their homes due to armed conflict and human rights violations, an estimated 80% of whom are women and children. There are an estimated 20 million refugees and persons of concern to the UN High Commission for Refugees around the world, 80% of whom are also women and children.

Colombia: An estimated 1.5 million people have been displaced internally by ongoing conflict, 80% of them women and children.

Trafficking

Bosnia: An estimated 60% of women trafficked in Sarejevo are between the ages of 19 and 24.

Disarmament

Albania: Due entirely to the participation of women, a UNDP weapons-for-development program collection was highly successful. In the town of Elbasan, women collected 2,332 weapons and 1,801 tons of ammunition. In the town of Diber, women collected 2,407 weapons and 855 tons of ammunition.

Georgia: 1,300 units of arms and ammunition and 210 kg of pure explosives were collected by the OSCE.

Mali: Women were credited for organizing the first "burning of arms" in a public ceremony which has since become an annual celebration of a policy against small arms and light weapons.

Liberia: Women demanded, worked for and achieved 80% disarmament before elections in 1995 under the leadership of Madam Ruth Perry.

HIV-AIDS

Of the 17 countries with over 100,000 children orphaned by AIDS, 13 are countries in conflict.

Peace Petition

In 1999, 99,000 women signed a Women's Peace Petition presented to the UN General Assembly, calling for at least 5% of the national military expenditure each year over a five-year period to be redirected towards health, education and employment.

Peace Negotiations

In the last two years, women have been actively involved in peace negotiations in Burundi (the Lusaka Peace Process), Afghanistan (the Bonn Process), and the Democratic Republic of Congo (the Sun City Process).

What Do Women Want?

* To be equal participants in conflict resolution, peace negotiations, reconciliation and reconstruction;

* To be part of peacekeeping missions and among key decision-making staff on the ground;

* To have gender advisors as part of every mission;

* For all peacekeepers to be trained to protect the particular rights and needs of women in conflict.

Source: Fact Sheet on Women and Armed Conflict, prepared and circulated at the United Nations on October 23, 2002 by the NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security, from IWTC Women's GlobalNet #212, Initiatives and Activities of Women Worldwide, Anne S. Walker, ed., October 23, 2002. On-line at http://www.iwtc.org.

International Human Rights Law Group: Women's Rights Advocacy

Grave violations of women's human rights continue to occur worldwide with terrifying regularity. Women throughout the world face systematic gender-based discrimination in laws, policies and practices that deny them equal rights as human beings. In many countries, women are regularly denied the right to life and security of person, full legal standing, health care, education, employment, inheritance and freedom of movement. Women still do not have full access to economic and political decision-making processes in their families, their nations or international institutions. Too often, governments allow crimes against women to go unpunished, continuing a culture of impunity for family members, state agents and others who discriminate against or commit violence against women. At the same time, the voices of women's rights groups combating such violations face enormous obstacles in reaching national and international decision-making institutions.

For more than a decade, IHRLG has been a leading organization in the international human rights movement promoting women's human rights. IHRLG has affected the development and implementation of international standards for the protection of women's human rights through direct advocacy in watershed international fora including the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna, Austria; the Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing, 1995); and the 2001 World Conference Against Racism (Durban, South Africa). IHRLG has also played a leading role in drawing attention to violations of women's human rights in the name of religion or custom, incorporating gender-based crimes into the 1998 International Criminal Court Treaty, drafting the 1999 Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, and developing the human rights standards for the treatment of trafficked persons stipulated by the 2000 International Protocol Against Trafficking.

IHRLG launched our Women's Rights Advocacy Program (WRAP) in 1992 to ensure that women's human rights are integrated into all IHRLG programs. Our Washington-based WRAP staff provide gender training for IHRLG staff and act as internal consultants and advisors in the development of IHRLG projects that amplify the voices of local women's rights activists in international fora (such as the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, the UN Commission on Human Rights and the Organization of American States) to strengthen the capacity of these activists to call on governments and international institutions to respond to women's experiences. We also help women's rights activists use legal strategies and international human rights standards to make national governments accountable for violations of women's human rights and responsible for improving women's lives.

IHRLG's current areas of women's rights advocacy include:

* Promoting women's economic rights;

* Addressing violations of women's rights in the name of tradition, culture or religion; and

* Supporting women in conflict and post-conflict situations.

Our current women's rights advocacy projects include in-country programs in Afghanistan/Pakistan, Morocco and Yemen and an Initiative Against Trafficking in Persons.

From the website of the International Human Rights Law Group, http://www. hrlawgroup.org/thematic_programs/ womens_rights_advocacy/

The author is a Colombian psychologist currently residing in Canada. She participates in the Ruta Pacifica de las Mujeres (Women's Route Towards Peace) and Women in Black, movements that seek a peaceful resolution to the armed conflict in Colombia from a feminist perspective. This paper was presented at the conference "Open the Borders" held in Vancouver in March 2002. Translation by Naomi Fowler.