Using International Law to Wage Peace in Colombia

WASHINGTON - In recent decades, human rights advocates have won
passage of a system of international human rights treaties, helping to
address a wide range of social justice concerns.  More and
more, local activists are devising ways to use these international
standards to make real change at home.

Each
major international human rights treaty has a corresponding "treaty
body" or committee responsible for monitoring whether its members are
fulfilling their obligations.  One of these important
treaties is the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
(ICCPR), which guarantees such rights as the right to life, the right to
be free from torture and the right to protection from unlawful
imprisonment.  The treaty body for the ICCPR is the Human
Rights Committee, and as a member state, Colombia must regularly defend
its record before that committee.

In July
2010, women human rights advocates will have the opportunity to
participate in that international review of Colombia's record.  The
people of Colombia have faced decades of armed conflict and rampant
human rights violations.  MADRE has joined with our partner
organizations in Colombia to submit a report to the Human Rights
Committee that gives voice to those lived experiences.

The sections below outline the evidence that we have
gathered to challenge any attempt to diminish the severity of the human
rights crises in Colombia.  We call on the Human Rights
Committee to respect the calls of Colombian women human rights advocates
and to demand concrete action from the Colombian government.

The Contours of Colombia's Conflict

• For
  over 40 years, Colombians have endured an armed conflict over their
  country's highly concentrated sources of natural wealth, especially
  land.

• In the mid-1960s, the Revolutionary Armed Forces
  of Colombia (FARC) arose as a peasant movement demanding land
  redistribution and social reform from the government.

• Since
  the 1990s, the conflict has been a three-way war: the FARC is
  battling the government; the government is fighting to eliminate
  the FARC; and brutal paramilitary groups function symbiotically
  with the government and Army to protect the interests of powerful
  elites.

• Instead of battling one another directly,
  Colombia's armed groups usually attack civilians suspected of
  siding with their enemy. The main victims of the conflict are women
  and families, hundreds of thousands of whom have been assaulted,
  displaced from their homes or killed.

For
more information, read MADRE
Talking Points: The Role of the US in Colombia's Conflict.

Forced Displacement and the Right
to Land of Indigenous Peoples and Afro-Colombians

• Under
  Colombia's Constitution, Indigenous Peoples and Afro-Colombians have
  been granted recognition of their collective rights to their land. 
  About 28%
  of the Colombian territory has been recognized as belonging to
  Indigenous Peoples.

• However, these communities have
  long suffered sizable losses of lands from forced displacement
  caused by the internal armed conflict and by projects relating to
  infrastructure and natural resource exploitation.

• Armed groups in Colombia have long sought control over the
  lands of Afro-Colombians and Indigenous Peoples for military and economic reasons, forcing them to either
  collaborate with the armed groups or abandon their lands.

• In
  2009, the Colombian Constitutional
  Court warned that at least 34 Indigenous
  Peoples "are in danger of cultural or physical extermination due
  to the internal armed conflict."

• A
  Snapshot of the Reality: Indigenous Peoples and
  Afro-Colombians have been denied their right to land, guaranteed in
  Colombian and international law, and the Colombian government has
  taken no measures to redress this.  The Indigenous Embera
  Katío People have been displaced from their lands by the
  construction of the Urrá dam, losing their connection to their
  traditional ways of life.  The Afro-Colombian communities
  of the Curvaradó and Jiguamiandó river basins have struggled
  against the installment of palm plantations in their territories
  since the 1990s, and as a result, they have been targeted by
  paramilitaries.

Forced Displacement of Women

• Almost 60% of
  displaced women have no job or income.  In
  2008, studies reported that in larger cities, 60% of
  all displaced households are experiencing or are at risk of food
  insecurity, and in
  smaller cities the rate rises to about 71%.

• Difficulty finding work, together with lack of access to
  food, housing, health care and education, entrenches poverty and
  social exclusion among both displaced Indigenous and Afro-Colombian
  women.

• Indigenous
  and Afro-Colombian women face racism, as well as low levels of
  education and poverty which perpetuates displacement, threatens their access to work, pursuit of cultural practices,
  participation in community life and safety from gender violence.

• Furthermore, displacement cuts off access to traditional
  foods and medicines for Indigenous women. Traditional
  organizational processes, languages, practices and teachings are
  weakened and in some cases lost.

Reproductive
Health

• In May 2006, the Colombian Constitutional Court
  partially decriminalized abortion, making exceptions for cases of
  documented rape, danger to the physical or mental health of the
  woman and fetal abnormality. 

• However,
  since that decision, medical personnel and health care institutions
  have misused the principle of "conscientious objection," which
  allows for a medical provider to cite their conscience in denying a
  woman an abortion.  This has led to mistreatment
  of and discrimination against women seeking reproductive health
  services.  Some clinics have made their doctors sign
  blanket declarations of "conscientious objection" to refuse to
  provide abortion services altogether.

• Alejandro Ordoñez, the
  Colombian official responsible for supervising compliance with the
  Constitution and for protecting human rights, is also responsible for
  prosecuting and punishing health care providers who violate a
  woman's right to access safe and legal abortions.  Yet,
  he has refused to investigate the human rights violation
  constituted by the misuse of the "conscientious objection"
  exception.

• In a number of cases, judges have refused to rule
  on cases relating to the misuse of "conscientious objection" to
  deny a woman's access to abortion.  Moreover, Ordoñez
  has ordered public officials to ignore Colombian laws that
  decriminalize abortion.

• Individual doctors who object to
  performing abortions have the legal duty to refer the woman to a
  doctor who will carry out the procedure.

• Women in
  Colombia experience both physical and mental suffering as a result of
  the denial of the right to therapeutic abortion, including in cases
  in which pregnancy endangers the life of the woman. Women
  experiencing complications of pregnancy and needing therapeutic
  abortion are forced to suffer from painful, frightening and
  life-threatening conditions, often for many months.

• Women
  experiencing unsafe abortions or other obstetric emergencies and who are
  often in extreme pain and require immediate treatment also fear
  the consequence of prosecution for seeking out an illegal abortion.
  Added to the fear of being prosecuted is the fear that needed
  treatment will be denied by doctors citing "conscientious
  objection."

• A Snapshot of the Reality:  Blanca,
  a 13-year old girl who was raped and as a result became pregnant,
  was sent to seven different health care providers, all of whom
  refused to provide an abortion, arguing conscientious objection and
  willfully ignoring their obligation to immediately refer her to an
  adequate provider. The girl was ultimately forced to carry out a
  high-risk pregnancy and give the baby up for adoption. She suffered
  permanent health consequences including scoliosis and lung damage.

Sexual Violence

• In
  2006, the Committee on the Rights of Children stated that the
  widespread discrimination against women in Colombia puts them at
  greater risk of recruitment by armed forces as well as sexual
  exploitation, internal displacement and continued violation of
  their rights.

• In 2006,
  the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights Rapporteur stated, "The
  violence and discrimination against women is not solely the
  product of the armed conflict-they are fixtures in
  the lives of women during times of peace that worsen and degenerate
  during the internal strife."

• Sexualized
  violence is one of the primary causes of the forced displacement
  of women in Colombia.  It is estimated that two out of
  every ten women are forced
  to leave their homes because of gender violence.

• An
  analysis by two Colombian women's organizations established that acts
  of sexual violence have occurred in a range of conflict-related
  situations, such as during active attacks, as a result of
  forced displacement, or targeting women within armed groups as a
  means of control.

• Girl members of illegal armed
  groups are particularly vulnerable to grave sexual violence. They
  are forced to use inadequate and often harmful methods of
  contraception and forced
  to have an abortion if they become pregnant.

• A
  Snapshot of the Reality:  One former girl child
  soldier told the story that her commanding officer one day
  announced that he would separate the virgins from the other girls. 
  They were forced to have sex with the commanding officers. 
  Many girls later testified that they knew their lives were
  at stake and that their choices were either to be raped or killed.

Threats
against Women Human Rights Defenders

• Patterns
  of threats and harassment against human rights defenders, and
  often their families, continue to worsen in Colombia. Journalists,
  trade unionists, magistrates, lawyers, student and youth activists,
  women defenders, Indigenous and Afro-Colombian leaders suffer
  physical violence and threats because of their legitimate efforts
  to uphold human rights and fundamental freedoms.

• When community members are
  perceived to sympathize with adversary groups, often simply for not
  showing enough resistance, they are punished by paramilitaries and
  guerrilla groups.  In testimonies gathered by MADRE
  and our sister organization Taller de Vida, community leaders
  shared stories of harassment and threats made against their life,
  forcing them to flee their homes on little or no notice, leaving
  all they own behind.

• Extrajudicial executions have
  been a widely documented practice committed by military units
  across the country.  Following a
  fact-finding mission to Colombia in June 2009, Phillip Alston, the
  Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions, stated
  that extrajudicial killings of women activists are used
  "especially in order to control and instill fear in rural
  populations, to intimidate elected officials, to punish those
  alleged to be collaborating with the government, or to promote
  criminal objectives."
• Instead
  of protecting the honor and reputation of its citizens, the Government
  of Colombia is actively complicit in stigmatizing those who defend human
  rights. Women human rights defenders have been accused
  by high-level officials of being linked to guerrillas or terrorists. Government
  officials are making public accusations to sully the reputations of
  independent women's rights activists.

• Other women human rights
  defenders have faced death threats, lost family
  members to arbitrary killings, or have been jailed without just
  cause because of their work defending against and exposing human
  rights violations in Colombia.

• A
  Snapshot of the Reality: On June 14^th, 2010, Aída
  Quilcué, an Indigenous women's human rights defender received a
  message threatening the lives of members of various Colombian human
  rights organizations. The message was sent after activists organized a
  public hearing to denounce human rights violations committed
  against Indigenous Peoples by the government security forces,
  paramilitaries and the FARC.

The Use of
Child Soldiers

• In 1999, Colombia
  outlawed the use of child soldiers in its army. This means that
  conscripts must be at least 18 years of age.

• Researchers
  from MADRE conducted over 30 interviews with former child solders
  from the capital city of Bogotá and the city of Pereira. The age of
  recruitment ranged from 10 to 17 years of age and participation
  varied through most of the identified armed groups in Colombia.

• Recruitment
  stories ranged from joining armed groups voluntarily due to
  abandonment, being orphaned, or fleeing domestic or sexual violence
  or other issues at home. Some children were lured into joining
  armed groups with promises of a better life only to find the
  promises were false and that they faced the punishment of death if
  they tried to escape.

• Since
  2006, the Attorney-General's Office has found
  109 bodies of children - mainly victims of armed groups - in
  clandestine graves. According to testimonies of former child soldiers,
  children recruited by armed groups were frequently killed for
  "insubordination" ranging from stealing food from the group's reserves
  to trying to escape.

• A Snapshot of the
  Reality:  One former child soldier reported
  that a friend who in desperation stole sugar from the food supplies was
  made to face a "War Council."  Members of the
  armed group were directed to vote on whether or not his punishment
  should be death.  The next day, they dug a hole in the
  ground and shot and killed him.

What
Needs to Change 

The
Colombian Government must:

• Restore communities to their
  lands and respect the collective land ownership of Afro-Colombians
  and Indigenous Peoples.  Communities must be
  guaranteed the right to prior consultation and consent with regard
  to massive infrastructure and natural resource exploitation
  projects.  The government must guarantee that policies
  to ensure the safe return of displaced peoples are implemented
  promptly and with care.

• Protect
  a woman's right to access safe and legal abortion. 
  This means that health care providers may not illegally
  claim "conscientious objection," and judges may not refuse judgment
  on cases where women have been denied abortions.  Furthermore,
  women must be guaranteed effective access to sexual and
  reproductive healthcare information and services - especially young
  women and rural women.

• Address
  the root causes of sexual violence against women and ensure their
  access to health, education and other necessary social services. 
  The state must prioritize its responsibility to
  investigate, prosecute and punish perpetrators of sexual violence
  and to fund special support services for survivors of such
  violence.

• End stigma against human
  rights defenders and initiate investigations to seek justice for
  those who have been attacked and killed.  Human
  rights defenders deserve not only physical protection, but the
  freedom to participate in politics at the local and national
  levels.

• Stop the use of child
  soldiers.  Government policies must address risk
  factors that make children vulnerable to recruitment and institute
  programs that support children facing abuse at home, that address
  the basic needs of displaced families and that provide training to
  teachers to recognize warning signs.