International Feminist Radio, June 2002

Colombian Women Against War 

By Katerina Anfossi

17 June 2002:  Several women groups and organizations have met for the preparation and participation of the great women´s march for peace next 25 July in Bogotá.  Women coming from different zones of the country will arrive at the capital city to meet at the Plaza Bolívar in an act which is expected to gather more than 20000 people.

This march adds up to the countless actions the women´s social movement is developing to end  the war,  to cease the  fire and to resume the political negotiations of the armed conflict which has inmersed Colombia in n unlimited violence for more than 38 years and which takes the lives of about 3500 persons yearly.  "Every day 20 persons are killed for socio-political reasons, 5 for guerrilla confrontations and 15 at their homes, places of work or on the way to it.  1000 persons are displaced daily, 42 every hour, a family every 10 minutes ".(1)

"We see in terror a war spectacle which is no other thing that the continuation of a patriarcal conception, which assumes the war as the midwife of history and humanity and which unfortunately shapes the destiny of humanity"
Colombian Women for Peace 

With a population nearing 38 million people, Colombia shows extreme social unequity and economic relations, aggravated by the armed conflict.  This reflects on the 23 million persons lacking entries for education, housing and health, with more than 2 million internally displaced, mostly campesina women who have abandoned their crops to pile up in a refugee camp or in the slums of Bogotá.  

In face of these facts women´s determination to reach peace has allowed for political stands which from their own political parties would not have been possible.  Henceforth this movement defines itself as a political force for peace, stressing that the proposals and actions to put an end to the war should come from the Colombian civil society.

For the organizers, the "taking of Bogotá", as it has also been called, is a demonstration before the armed actors in order to keep a direct and autonomous position in the negotiations towards the peace process.

Stopping the confrontation, recuperating the civil life and calling upon the citizenship to get involved in the peace actions will guide the steps of thousands of women and men on their march to Bogotá, clasped to their right to build peace with social justice and gender equity.

(1) Source:  Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law Commission,  Paz y País Congress, Bogotá, May  2002