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Gender-based violence continues to affect millions of Colombian women and girls who’ve been displaced by ongoing internal conflict.

While all of the roughly 4 million Colombians displaced by violence have suffered human rights violations and economic insecurity, displaced women are particularly vulnerable to sexual violence, physical threats, and political marginalization.

Earlier this month, I spoke with lawyer Luz Estella Romero, founder and coordinator of the Colectivo Mujeres al Derecho (Women’s Rights Collective, or COLEMAD). Since 2003, her group has fought for the rights of displaced rural women in some of Colombia’s most violent regions.

Conflict in rural Colombia has always revolved around land, Ms. Romero said. After two decades of violence, illegal armed groups have firmly established themselves in rural areas, putting women at high risk for abuse.

“In territories controlled by the security forces, paramilitaries, and guerillas, sexual violence against women is linked to the dispossession of land and is used as a war tactic, in which women associated with opposition armed groups are sexually assaulted,” Ms. Romero said. “The violence and displacement is orchestrated by economic interests [like agricultural and mining companies] who want to profit from our land.” 

Once women are displaced, they become even more vulnerable. Nearly 50 percent of displaced households are headed by women. And in a region where women have historically suffered from gender-based violence and discrimination, women face an uphill battle in reclaiming their rights and their land.

But rather than giving up, Colombia’s women got organized. In its fight to protect the human rights and dignity of women, COLEMAD brought together 34 regional organizations around two key issues: advocating for land restitution and fighting impunity.

“Women without land survive without anything,” Ms. Romero said. “Young girls are forced to prostitute themselves, and adult women can only find domestic work that pays less than $2 a day. These terrible conditions also make women victims of sexual violence, and none of the perpetrators are ever arrested or prosecuted.”

COLEMAD and its partner groups have organized workshops for more than 800 women, lobbied the Colombian government, and even brought a case before the Inter-American Human Rights Commission in Washington, DC. Because women activists have traditionally been ostracized in the region, COLEMAD also holds workshops for schoolchildren about the consequences of the armed conflict and the importance of women’s independence and activism.

Despite the Collective’s remarkable efforts, victims of violence almost never see their perpetrators successfully prosecuted, and most of Colombia’s displaced women continue to live lives of poverty, insecurity, and uncertainty. But in this region, where there is land, there is hope for progress.

“There is a saying I always like to quote when I am asked about the importance of land,” Ms. Romero concluded. “In the city, I cannot move from one house to another to bring my neighbor a coffee. In the country, there may be fences that separate us, but there are never barriers. For women, land is security. Land is dignity.”