What is the political situation in your country?
Colombia is the fourth most extensive country and the third one most populated of South America. It relies on large reserves of oil and is an important producer of gold, silver, emeralds, platinum and coal.
Nevertheless, is a very stratified society in which the traditionally rich families have taken advantage of this wealth in a major degree. Most of the population, which is almost mixed race - 80 ethnic groups exist, the Afro Colombians and indigenous communities - continue being victims of racial systematical discrimination, which has brought with it their marginalization, their poverty and their vulnerability to violence [1].
During the visit of the Assistant secretary of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, it was concluded that Colombia is the third country with major humanitarian crisis, after Angola and Afghanistan. The difference, however, is that they are in a Post Conflict situation, and Colombia is in the middle of an armed conflict, characteristic that aggravates more the situation.
More than 2.600.000 million of Colombians in displacement situation live without land and without destiny, more than 50 % are boys, girls and women. In addition, the displacement men and women organizations continue being threatened and their leaders are being prosecuted or murdered.
Colombian women represent the 54 % of the poor population and the 25 % of the homes have a woman as the head of family. Women are located in the most traditional fronts of the productive device and constitute near the 60 % of the economy informal sector, which represents extensive days of work, labor instability and exclusion of the social security system. Besides, they continue in the average and low levels of the occupational categories[2]. Discrimination exists in the wage remuneration understood as distinction, exclusion, restriction based on the sex, of 28 %, on relation with the income of men.
The rural women workers are the most affected by the wage discrimination and the unemployment. Though one cannot rely on statistical official numbers, it is possible to affirm that a trend exists to increase of the domestic violence as a consequence of the effects of the armed conflict. The violence is a weapon of war in conflict sectors; the armed actors commit serious damages in violence terms. Rape is used as a war strategy to debilitate and to conquer the enemy; the women are violated, terrified and abused. The strange seduction of weapon is used to violate, to flirt and to pregnant minors.
Talking about the violations to human rights, the Information Bank[3] during the period of July 1 of 2002 to June 30 of 2003 register the following numbers; 4351 persons were victims of human rights violations, (forced disappearances, arbitrary detentions, extrajudicial executions, tortures and in minor number, attempts, injured men and women and sexual violence) .The following groups were found as responsible of these violations: the paramilitary groups of 1510 cases, Military Forces (Navy, Army, Air Force) of 1246, the Police of 327 and other State security organisms (DAS, CTI, Gaula, Inpec) of 1268.
In serious infractions to the International Human Rights Law we have that 3028 persons were victims by the actors of the conflict. In this picture of infractions, to the guerrillas there were attributed the authorship of 1066 of the cases, Military Forces 499, Police 105, other State security organisms 91 and paramilitary groups 1317.
Many of the crimes committed by paramilitary groups were done with the active or passive participation of members of the public force[4]. When such participation does not exist, or there are no proofs that it exists, the Colombian Government becomes a participant of such crimes by the absence of a determined and coherent politic, directed to anticipating and sanctioning the violations to the human rights committed by these groups.
As it can be understood from the statistics, the armed conflict continues affecting more those who do not take part directly in the combat, i.e. the civil population. The increase of the violations of human rights indicates clearly that the war strategies and repression target the civil population. The principal responsibles of the forced displacement continued being the paramilitary groups with the 49 % followed by the guerrilla with a 28 % and the military forces with a 5 %.
The persistence of the socio political violence has a specific impact on girls and on women that has not been sufficiently valued; in the same way it is possible to observe how the militarization of the daily life is increasing as a strategy of national defense. It have been established that among these particular effects, the forced internal displacement affects women in a forceful way. According to the Committee for the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women, " women are those who suffer with most rigor the phenomenon of generalized violence in Colombia, since there are dozens of thousands of displaced women and heads of households who have not sufficient resources to survive, in a context in which they have to assume both reproductive and productive responsibilities towards their families and communities[5] ".
The forced displacement affects the family structures (increases the feminine headquarters of rural homes), the communitarian ones (dismantles organizational processes of the displaced communities), social and cultural (faces the displaced families with environments not known for them); and leaves the families unable to solve in an autonomous way their basic needs. But, especially, the displacement generates processes of uprooting, about which it is necessary to think, for the impact that this generates in the reconstruction of a country that lives war. In these contexts women have to face sharp changes that expand the inequity in the traditional roles, without possibilities or time to assume and to proceed with the psychological effects that this process leaves them. Another aspect is the costs for the organizations of the civil society, the threats against women leaders who are forced to flee to protect their lives and those of their families, as consequence of their social labor and of their role of defenders of human rights.
The Afro women, the black minorities, the indigenous women, the working class women and definitively, the women, with their children, young men and women and their tragedies, are those that- like in all wars - bury their own – and our - dead, and initiate the road to exile and to the breaking up of their social, syndical and communitarian structures, their loss of entity, of their social net, that of our collective histories, doomed to the most shameful of the miseries and the most absolute impunity of the crimes committed against them.
War, which is a patriarchal practice because it is based on an exclusively masculine logic, is a product of the historical relations of domination and of exclusion that has been established, makes palpable in an irrefutable way the serious violations against the women human rights that are committed in the wars but especially, those that remain silenced in " times of peace ".
To advance the equality among persons, it is necessary to bear in mind the processes of repair and justice, that young and older women need to overcome their own difficulties in the recognition and rights of the others and of their country in order to inspire their collective actions orientated to guarantee young and older women a life free of discrimination and violence and of dreaming of a possible country and in peace.
The Colombian section of Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, LIMPAL, work on promoting processes of empowerment and organization for a permanent peaceful resistance with actions of justice and repair in the promotion and defense of human rights and to promote a democratic culture. Women, boys, girls and children, in the middle of the conflict and permanent violation of human rights, do not manage to identify a path towards peace. LIMPAL tries to promote this through diverse strategies in the search of a democratic culture, a possible country, not as a place of permanent violence but a place of reconciliation. Therefore a place to promote peace.
[1] Committee for the Elimination of the Racial Discrimination, final Observations on the periodic reports eighth and ninth of Colombia, on August 20, 1999 (A/54/18, párrs. 430 to 457), párr. 432.
[2] Report of the High Commissioner of the United Nations for the Human rights, on the situation of the human rights in Colombia, 2000
[3] Information recounted in "El embrujo autoritario" the first year of the Alvaro Uribe Vélez government. Colombian platform of Human rights. September 2003.
[4] In the matter, the Office of the High Commissioner for the Human rights in Colombia, has indicated that in massacres committed by paramilitary groups, as that of Mapiripán, among others, happened in the year 1997, one could have verified the responsibility of active military men in such facts. Report of the High Commissioner for the human rights on the situation of Human rights in Colombia. 1997
[5]CEDAW/C/1999/I/L. 1/Add.8. Convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women, 20 º period of meetings, On January 19 to February 5, 1999..
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