“Nothing has ever been achieved for displaced women in Colombia without us fighting for our own rights, so we decided to take our cases to court. We knew we were taking a risk as so many of our leaders have been threatened and physically attacked, but we decided to go ahead anyway.”
A Colombian displaced woman told me this while we sat in the women’s community center that had recently been re-built after it was burned down by an illegal armed group.
More than three million people have been forcibly displaced [1] by the ongoing armed conflict in Colombia, and about 80% of them are women and children. Nearly 50% of displaced households are headed by women who are recovering from the loss of husbands and partners in the conflict. Yet there has been minimal attention paid to the needs of these women [2] who are bearing the brunt of displacement. On a recent mission to Colombia we spoke with displaced women who have suffered sexual violence at the hands of legal and illegal armed groups, been forced into prostitution in order to ensure the survival of their families after receiving no humanitarian assistance, and lost babies due to lack of access to emergency health care.
Colombian women’s organizations concluded that the lack of respect for displaced women’s rights was unacceptable and they had to take action. The women’s groups started to gather information about individual cases where women’s rights, which are guaranteed by the Colombian Constitution, had been neglected. They collected 600 exemplary cases, which included 183 cases of sexual violence that had not been investigated, and they submitted them to the court.
One year ago, in a landmark ruling, the Colombian Constitutional Court declared that the Government of Colombia was failing in its duties to displaced women. The court ordered the government to provide humanitarian assistance to all displaced women up until they are financially stable and to set up 13 socio-economic programs to ensure the protection and rights of all displaced women. It also ordered the government to respond to the needs of the 600 women cited in the case, and to ensure that the 183 cases of sexual violence cited in the case are investigated.
We visited Colombia just before the case was due to go back to court for review. We heard of a few advances, with some extensions of humanitarian assistance being granted to women and some improvement in attitudes towards displaced women by officials. But what has been done so far has been minimal and has had little effect. We asked government offices in several different states what they were doing to comply with the order. “There were 3 living here, but we think they moved…” was a typical reply. When we pointed out that the court order applies to all displaced women, not just the 600 cited in the order, we were told that they were going to start with the 600 as a “pilot program.”
I discussed this with one of the displaced women leaders involved in bringing the case before the Constitutional Court. She responded by showing me the bullet-proof vest she has been given for her protection after receiving numerous death threats. Like most of the leaders who took great personal risks to bring this court case, she is deeply disappointed about the lack of response by the Government of Colombia. From our observations during our time in Colombia, we could only share her disappointment. The U.S. has a role to play, and the Obama Administration should call on the Government of Colombia to fully comply with the court order. Implementation of this court order would represent a major step forward in defending the rights of displaced women.