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ANALYSIS | Colombia needs a leader to implement the peace agreement. For women, it's a matter of life or death

2022-06-19T18:59:14.515Z


Colombia votes this June 19 in a second round and the fate of the country's historic peace process, and how it impacts Colombians living in the midst of a fragile truce, may well be at stake.


JOAQUIN SARMIENTO/AFP via Getty Images

(CNN) --

Today, Colombians will return to the polls to vote in the second round of the country's presidential election.

Six years after the peace agreement between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) ended five decades of conflict, voters will choose between two different futures for Colombia.

The fate of the country's historic peace process, and how it affects Colombians living in the midst of a fragile truce, may well hang in the balance.

Both candidates have said they will support the implementation of the peace process, but the details of that support are not always clear.

Understandably, this has caused those most affected by the conflict, who worked hard to broker peace, to feel concerned.

The contest has a series of firsts.

If former guerrilla Gustavo Petro, 62, wins on June 19, he will be Colombia's first leftist leader.

Petro won the first round with just over 40% of the vote.

In this second round he faces the 77-year-old construction tycoon, Rodolfo Hernández, a populist.

The second round candidates Rodolfo Hernández and Gustavo Petro.

Also for the first time, the running mates of both final-round candidates are Afro-Colombian women.

Francia Márquez, a 2018 Goldman Environmental Prize winner with a long history of rural social activism, is on the ticket with Petro.

With Hernández is Marelen Castillo Torres, who has spent her professional life in the academy.

She is currently the Academic Vice Chancellor of the Minuto de Dios University.

In a country where women's representation at many levels of government is low and indigenous and Afro-Colombian women are disproportionately affected by conflict-related violence, the fact that Colombia appears to be on track to have its first black female vice president is noteworthy.

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The two women have taken on different roles in the campaigns.

Márquez, who after leading women in her community to protest against illegal mining and community evictions has been a public figure in Colombia since the 2010s, has spoken out against the

country's political and economic

status quo

during the campaign. electoral.

Márquez has long championed women's rights, economic empowerment programs and access to land for the poor.

Little is known about Castillo, who has no political background.

He is a recent addition to the Hernandez campaign and has not made many public appearances, although in media interviews he has spoken of promoting access to education.

Beyond a woman to the right of the president, what can Colombians, and specifically Colombian women who bore the brunt of the longest armed conflict in the Western Hemisphere, expect from their future leaders?

A history of conflict-related violence

Women in Colombia suffered disproportionately in the more than 50 years of conflict between government forces, guerrillas, and paramilitary groups.

However, women also played an important role as peacebuilders in ending that conflict and rebuilding their communities afterwards.

Sexual violence was widely used to gain social and territorial control.

The most up-to-date data from Colombia's victim registry documents more than 31,000 reported cases of sexual violence.

Millions of women have also been affected by forced displacement, many of whom assumed economic responsibility for their families after their husbands were killed and they had to flee their homes and communities.

Studies have shown that displaced women face a high risk of gender-based violence, including sexual violence.

As a direct result of the gendered consequences of the conflict, gender equality featured prominently in the peace accords, as did recognition of the need for racial and ethnic justice.

Women played an important role during the negotiations, even forming a 'Gender Subcommission', a unique space made up of representatives of the FARC, the government and civil society and aimed at guaranteeing that all experiences of conflict were recognized and addressed in the final deal.

When finalized, Colombia's Final Agreement included commitments in key areas including rural reform, security and protection guarantees, and victims' rights.

"The recognition of racial, ethnic and gender discrimination as underlying forces in the conflict, and the inclusion of provisions to address them directly...was an achievement of civil society, in particular women, LGBTIQ, Afro-Colombian and indigenous organizations" wrote City University of New York associate professor of law Lisa Davis in the Columbia Human Rights Law Review.

Davis added: “Afro-Colombian organizations, with strong leadership from Afro-Colombian women, developed a vision for the peace process that recognized and remedied historical injustices and discrimination committed against them, including gender discrimination, to ensure an inclusive peace. and durable."

However, the conservative government of Iván Duque, which took power in 2018, has not yet implemented 42 of the 133 gender commitments it had agreed to, according to the Kroc Institute, which is in charge of monitoring the implementation of the Agreement.

Speaking more broadly about the deal, the Washington-based research and advocacy organization WOLA wrote on the accords' fifth anniversary that "deal implementation has gone worse than anticipated, and opportunities to break the cycle of violence They're evaporating."

Although the peace agreement is legally binding, the rigor with which it is applied is subject to the interest of the government in power.

Petro and Márquez have a clear outline of how they plan to implement the peace process if they are elected.

While Hernández and Castillo also say they will implement it, their promises are more vague.

Hernández has already come under international media scrutiny for what critics say is the gap between the campaign and the man behind the campaign.

CNN, for example, reports that while Hernandez's "clearest speech has been his promise to 'get rid of corruption' ... [he] has had his own problems with corruption allegations, and some continue." .

Hernandez has denied the charge that is expected to go to court next month, saying: "With the current laws, any candidate can be sued by anyone."

For their part, the social leaders with whom I have been speaking in recent weeks do not trust that the implementation of the process is a central axis of the Hernández government, which means that the security conditions in rural areas could be maintained or even become more dangerous.

Seeking peace and denouncing drug trafficking, the recruitment of children into armed groups, and environmental degradation have come at great cost to women leaders in Colombia.

For the past seven years, I have been researching how women seek justice in high-risk contexts.

In that time, I've heard dozens of accounts of activists being threatened, singled out, and attacked.

Many of the women I interviewed, often with their government-provided bodyguards shadowing them, said not only did the 2016 peace process never materialize, but the threats they face are more intense than ever.

Their names, for example, have been included in public death threats issued by armed groups with a simple message: stop your social activism or die.

As a result, many no longer live in their home communities, isolating themselves from their families to protect their children.

Last week, a colleague and I spent time with Afro-Colombian women leaders in northern Cauca province, a conflict-affected region in the country's southwest, where Márquez was born and began her activism.

In recent weeks, many of these women told me that they had received death threats through phone calls or messages.

Some say they have narrowly survived assassination attempts.

Community leader Doña Tuta suffered worse luck.

She was murdered near the city of Cali last week.

She is the latest in a long line of women human rights defenders who have lost their lives in Colombia since the signing of the Peace Accords.

For Colombia's grassroots women leaders across the country, what is at stake in these elections is their ability to live safely in their communities.

If, how and when the next president will actually implement the peace agreement could be the difference between life and death for them.

Supporters of Colombian left-wing presidential candidate Gustavo Petro stick up banners before a demonstration in the Fontibón neighborhood in Bogotá on June 12, 2022.

The peace process is more important than ever

Although Colombia is now a post-conflict state on paper, the number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) continues to rise as other armed groups continue to clash violently.

Colombia now has the third largest number of internally displaced people in the world, behind only Syria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The Latin American state has been described by Reuters as "the most dangerous country in the world for environmentalists".

When the FARC demobilized in 2016, other armed groups took their place.

Competing for control of valuable resources such as coca and illegal mining, and transportation routes, these groups intensified their attack against social leaders who promoted the implementation of the peace agreements in their communities.

The platform of Petro and Márquez recognizes that women have suffered during the conflict in a particular way.

It promises to fully implement the peace agreement with the FARC and will focus on rural agrarian reform, protection guarantees and environmental protection, which are essential for women to have the ability to earn an income and support their families.

Hernández has also said he would implement the peace agreement and seek an agreement with the National Liberation Army, the country's largest leftist guerrilla group, known by its acronym ELN.

Compared to Donald Trump in part for his controversial comments, including on women's roles as "ideally ... [engaging] in raising children," Hernandez, however, has not detailed how women's unique needs would be included in this implementation of the peace process.

Polls remain tight ahead of Sunday's vote.

Colombians are frustrated by the country's current economic crisis, rising levels of violence, and diminishing opportunities.

As such, beyond gender issues, Petro campaigns for profound social and economic change, while Hernández focuses on post-pandemic growth and the fight against corruption.

The broad and urgent needs of Colombian women, and Afro-Colombian and indigenous women in particular, may not necessarily be at the forefront of the upcoming elections, yet it is clear that all Colombians hope for change.

For the at-risk women leaders I work with, change may not come soon enough.

Peace AgreementAnalysisArmed conflict ColombiaWomen's rightsElections ColombiaGender

Source: cnnespanol

All news articles on 2022-06-19

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