REPORT LAUNCHED 26 November 2024
Today (26 November 2024), ABColombia launches its report from the conference entitled “Violence Against Women, Girls and LGBTQI+ Community: Its Causes and Consequences” that we held in Bogota alongside our Colombian partners in February 2023. Women’s and LGBTQI+ organisations and grassroots women leaders from diverse communities across Colombia discussed the lived experiences of women and girls; their successes and difficulties in influencing decision makers; their challenges in resisting armed actors, the forced recruitment of their children; and how they are attempting to bring about structural change. Women in all their diversity have developed and are developing resistance strategies, projects for transformative change, peacebuilding and creating access to justice for women and the LGBTQI+ community. The final section of the report looks at the Colombian government’s policies and the international community’s response to these issues.
In launching this report, ABColombia wants to remember the courage of all the amazing, courageous, and selfless women leaders and human rights defenders who have died defending the rights of others, standing up to armed actors, corrupt politicians and officials completely unarmed, except for words, actions of resistance and protest, and the law; who, through peaceful means, worked for a just and fair society, to uphold democracy, and to end violence. Women who have brought about changes to policy, changes in their community and held to account the perpetrators and at times the authors of crimes against humanity, war crimes, human rights violations and abuses, and on a daily basis challenged racism and discrimination. Dedications to just a few of these women can be found in the report.
This report on violence against women, girls and LGBTQI+ persons in Colombia comes at a key moment as we also commemorate the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and Girls, and kickstart the 16 Days of Activism for this critical global issue.
In Colombia, decades of conflict have deepened the sexual and gender-based violence that women, girls and the LGBTQI+ community experience. This is a violence that is driven by patriarchal attitudes and intersects with colonial attitudes, structural racism, inequality and classism. As a result, this violence disproportionately impacts Afro-Colombian and Indigenous women and girls.
Peace negotiations, like the historic Peace Accord between the Colombian government and the FARC-EP in 2016, have attempted to bring an end to decades of violence and recognise inequality and exclusion. Despite this, repeating patterns of violence that have been seen in conflict are now being embedded in the domestic sphere and in the everyday lives of women.
Sexual and gender-based violence continues to be used against those women who speak out in defence of their rights in an effort to punish, silence and limit their political power. Between 2022 and March 2024, 42 women human rights defenders (WHRDs) were killed in Colombia. The loss of a WHRD sends a frightening message that hinders the emergence of new women leaders. The extreme cruelty seen in the killings of WHRDs – because they are women – is mirrored in attacks and killings against members of the LGBTQI+ community, where particularly cruel violence is used against them.
ABColombia welcomes you to join us for the launch of this report on Tuesday 26 November 2024 in the IPU Room in the Houses of Parliament. More information and tickets available here: bit.ly/IndigenousVAWGEvent.