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International Center for Transitional Justice

October 2016

Obstacles to Women Taking Part in Participatory Mechanisms for Dealing with Victims of the Internal Armed Conflict

“We Want to Be Heard”COLOMBIA


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AcknowledgementsThe organizations gratefully acknowledge the authorities, public officials and public servants who were willing to share their thoughts about the advances in the implementation of the law, as well as the participation of women victims. Special acknowledgement is made to the women victims who participated in the regional workshops. We are forever in their debt for their warm welcome, kindness, courage and trust. Their stories, dreams and struggles inspire us daily to persist in our objective to raise awareness about their grievances.

This report is the result of the research project “Obstacles to women taking part in the participatory mechanisms for dealing with victims of the internal armed conflict,” conducted by the organization Casa de la Mujer, under an agreement with the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) and with the support of the German International Cooperation Agency’s Cercapaz Program (GIZ). The editing and publication of the report was carried out by ICTJ with funding from the Embassy of the Netherlands, who also funded part of the field work and research. We also thank the United Nations Trust Fund for the Elimination of Violence against Women (UNTF) for its support of the ICTJ Gender Justice Program in New York, which provided technical assistance to this project.

About Casa de la MujerCasa de la Mujer is a human rights organization, founded in 1982, that seeks to contribute to the vindication, defense and promotion of the human rights of women from a feminist perspective, strengthening of the rule of law, and democratic and inclusive peacebuilding in Colombia. Casa de la Mujer provides training, psychosocial assistance, legal aid and political advocacy services with the purpose of strengthening the women’s movement in Colombia and in Latin America, as well as the victims’ movement and groups of women victims of the internal armed conflict in 20 departments around the country. Casa de la Mujer also develops and promotes proposals related to the historical memory of women, the improvement of their living conditions, strengthening women’s citizenship, and social justice-oriented peacebuilding and peacekeeping for men and women.

About ICTJ ICTJ assists societies confronting massive human rights abuses to promote accountability, pursue truth, provide reparations, and build trustworthy institutions. Committed to the vindication of victims’ rights and the promotion of gender justice, ICTJ provides expert technical advice, policy analysis, and comparative research on transitional justice approaches, including criminal prosecutions, reparations initiatives, truth seeking and memory, and institutional reform. For more information, visit www.ictj.org

About the Cercapaz Program, of the German International Cooperation Agency, GIZCercapaz, or the Program of Cooperation between the State and Civil Society for Peacebuilding, is imple-mented by the GIZ (German International Cooperation Agency- Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit), commissioned by the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Deve-lopment. Since its creation in 2007, its mission has been to promote agreements and synergies between civil society and the state, which have led to joint peacebuilding initiatives in the following thematic lines: Inclusion of Traditionally Excluded Groups, Peaceful Coexistence and Comprehensive Attention to Violen-ce, and Regional Development Perspectives. The cross-cutting areas of its work include youth, the gender perspective, and private sector partnerships. The third and final phase of Cercapaz (2012-2015) will focus on the departments Caldas, Cesar, Norte de Santander and on national level initiatives.

© 2016 International Center for Transitional Justice. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without full attribution.

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CONTENTS

Executive Summary....................................................................................................................1

1. Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 3

2. Research Methodology ............................................................................................................. 7

3. Participation of Victims in Law 1448 of 2011 ............................................................................9 Transitory Spaces for Participation .................................................................................................... 11 Protocol on Effective Participation .................................................................................................... 11

4. Obstacles Arising from Their Status as Women .......................................................................13 Women Do Not Recognize Their Capacity for Political Action or Their Right to Effective Participation....13 Women Don’t Know Their Rights ..................................................................................................... 15

5. Sociopolitical and Economic Obstacles ....................................................................................17 Participation Limited to Its Formal Dimension ................................................................................. 17 Socio-economic Conditions of Women ............................................................................................. 19 The Armed Conflict and Violence Against Women ........................................................................... 22

6. Institutional and Organizational Barriers ...............................................................................24 Obstacles Arising from Barriers in Public Institutions ....................................................................... 24 Failings in the Quality of Care Given to Women Victims ................................................................. 27 Difficulties in Organizing and Organizational Weaknesses ................................................................ 32 Women’s Distrust of Public Institutions ............................................................................................ 33

7. Conclusions ............................................................................................................................. 35

8. Recommendations .................................................................................................................. 38

Bibliography ............................................................................................................................40

Appendix: Methodological Data .............................................................................................43


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ACRONYMS

AUC United Self Defense Forces of ColombiaCAVR Commission for Reception, Truth and ReconciliationCINEP Center for Research and Grassroots EducationDPS Administrative Department for Social ProsperityELN National Liberation ArmyFARC Revolutionary Armed Forces of ColombiaFESCOL Friedrich Ebert Stiftung in ColombiaGIZ German Agency for International CooperationICBF Colombian Institute for Family WelfareICTJ International Center for Transitional JusticeINCODER Colombian Institute for Rural DevelopmentSNAIPD National System for Integral Attention to IDPsSNARIV National System for Comprehensive Attention and Reparations of VictimsUAO Attention and Orientation Unit for Internally Displaced PersonsUARIV Unit for Comprehensive Attention and Reparations of Victims

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Executive Summary

More than fifty years of conflict in Colombia have left hundreds of thousands of victims of multiple forms of violence, such as forced disappearance, murder, extra-judicial executions, kidnappings, torture and various forms of sexual and gender-based violence, including rape.

At various points in this long conflict, several governments and institutions have tried to implement measures aimed at promoting peace, accountability for human rights violations and assistance to victims. The most recent effort was Congress’ passing of Law 1448 of 2011, also known as the Victims and Land Restitution Law (Victims Law). This legislation established reparations and land restitution programs for victims of the armed conflict. At the same time, it contains norms that guarantee the effective participa-tion of victims in the different stages of reparations. To this end, it mandates the setting up of the Roun-dtables for the Participation of Victims at a municipal, district, departmental and national level as well as the designing of a protocol for effective participation.

It is important to bear in mind that women account for almost 50% of all victims and that the patterns of violence they experience may be different from those experienced by men. The realities they face in the context of the armed conflict in the regions under study show a continuum in the violence exercised against them, their subordinate role, their oppression, the threats and harassment by the armed actors and the lack of economic resources to live a dignified life. Thus, women’s participation in the framework proposed under Law 1448 of 2011 is imperative in order for their experiences and suggestions to be made known and in order to enable them to influence the implementation of public policies that affect them. Likewise, it is essential to identify the social, economic, political, institutional and cultural obstacles that they and their organizations face in participating in these ways.

This research looked at the obstacles faced by women and their organizations in the participatory processes for the implementation of Law 1448 of 2011 in the departments of Cesar and Meta and the Capital District of Bogotá. The information was gathered through interviews with the authorities and public servants at a municipal and departmental level, as well as workshops with organized and unorganized victims.

The obstacles faced by women can be grouped into three categories: those derived from their status as women; sociopolitical and economic; and institutional and organizational. Some of these have also beco-me serious impediments to the participation of women victims becoming a mechanism to transform this situation.

The first group of obstacles is the result of the social construction of what it means to be a woman and the implications of this on institutional responses to restoring and guaranteeing the effective enjoyment


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of their rights. Firstly, this means that women have difficulty in acknowledging that they have a right to participate in the public sphere. Linked to this is an ignorance of their rights and the laws and public policies that protect them, including the Victims Law, and the opportunities they have to report crimes and demand justice. Added to this, among other factors, are the difficulties caused by the dynamics of the armed conflict, such as the ripping apart of the social fabric, the destruction of means of economic suste-nance, the traumas felt in the wake of atrocities and being uprooted from one’s community.

In the second category, socio-political and economic obstacles faced include the fact that participation is limited to a purely formal aspect for the sake of political correctness, and reduced to a series of established mechanisms limited by legal provisions. Consequently, the spaces are only, or mainly, useful for justifying decisions in which the women have not taken part, or to meet political or legal requirements.

The precarious socio-economic situation in which many women live is another factor that curtails their participation in the spaces of the Victims Law. Lastly within this second grouping, the persistence of the armed conflict and the increasing threats against and harassment of leaders were identified by the women as significant obstacles that curb their participation.

The third and final category of obstacles identified is related to organizational and institutional barriers and, in turn, comprises three aspects. Firstly, the difficulties encountered with public institutions and the experience and abilities of those charged with dealing with victims. Secondly, the difficulties in organizing victims and the failings of these organizations in processes of participation and restoration of rights. Last-ly, there is the distrust of public institutions, which can be seen in the complaints about the ineffectual, feeble and inefficient (insufficient?) assistance given by the state as well as in, the identification of the state as one of those responsible for women’s plight.

Overcoming these obstacles and guaranteeing women’s access to the participatory spaces created under Law 1448 of 2011 requires decisive action by the state institutions entrusted with its implementation. In order to strengthen these participatory mechanisms, the involvement of women victims and the promo-tion of their proposals must be incentivized and improved.

Improving the response of public institutions requires access to accurate and disaggregated data on the so-cio-economic conditions of the victims, the design of strategies to minimize those conditions that curtail their participation, and training of public servants to incorporate a rights-based and differential approach to dealing with women victims. Finally, there is a need to improve the protective measures to guarantee the security and physical integrity of these victims, their leaders and organizations.

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1. Introduction

For over fifty years Colombia has been engulfed in an internal armed conflict that has caused the displa-cement of more than five million people. In the period 1958-2012, the conflict has led to the deaths of at least 220,000 people, the majority of them civilians.1 Hundreds of thousands of people have been victims of a variety of types of violence, such as forced disappearance, murder, extrajudicial executions, kidnap-ping, torture and various forms of sexual and gender-based violence, including rape.

A survey has shown that in the years 2001 to 2009 alone, almost half a million women in 407 municipa-lities affected by the conflict (out of a total of 1,123 municipalities in the entire country) have experienced some form of gender-based violence related to the conflict.2 Around 80% of these women have never reported these types of acts to the authorities. It is calculated that the total number of women victims of the armed conflict is 2,683,335, which accounts for almost half of all victims.3

At various points in this long conflict, several governments and institutions have tried to implement measures aimed at promoting peace, accountability for human rights violations and assistance to victims. These initiatives have included humanitarian aid to victims of forced displacement, the demobilization and reintegration of members of paramilitary groups, the prosecution of members of paramilitary and guerrilla groups through a special criminal mechanism as proposed by the national government, and, more recently, comprehensive reparations for victims.

However, these efforts have met with difficulties due to wavering political will, bureaucratic barriers, and the ongoing internal armed conflict. In addition to the confrontation between the security forces and the guerrilla groups of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Libera-tion Army (ELN) there are continued violations being committed by members of resurgent paramilitary groups. The majority of these actors had previously demobilized as members of the United Self Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) under Law 975 of 2005, also known as the Justice and Peace law. These new groups continue to bear responsibility for a wide range of violations, such as murders, kidnapping, threats and attacks against leaders and human rights activists – including numerous women leaders – forced displacement, and illicit recruitment.

Despite the enormous difficulties faced in searching for peace, justice, truth and reparations in the midst of conflict, some progress can be seen. In June 2011, the Congress of the Republic passed Law 1448 of

1 Grupo de Memoria Histórica, ¡Basta Ya! Colombia: memorias de guerra y dignidad.2 Sánchez Gómez et al., Violencia sexual en contra de las mujeres en el contexto del conflicto armado colombiano, 2001-2009.3 According to information published by the magazine Semana as part of its Victims Project, there were a reported 5,405,829 victims for some of the acts committed against them that occurred between 1985 and March 31, 2013. Of this total, 2,682,335, or 49.6%, are women.


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2011, better known as the Victims and Land Restitution Law (hereinafter the Victims Law). This piece of legislation set up reparations and land restitution programs for the victims of the armed conflict.4 Article 28 also sets out the right of victims “to participate in the formulation, implementation and monitoring of public policy on prevention, attention and comprehensive reparations” (Article 28, Numeral 5, Law 1448 of 2011). The preamble to the original text presents the law as “an unprecedented legal framework to rebuild the social fabric through effective measures to favor those persons who have suffered the conse-quences of the armed conflict.”5

However, due to its own ambitious nature and the context of an ongoing armed conflict, this law, which is a key element in the development of a transitional justice process, raises important challenges both for the state and its institutions, as well as for civil society.

One of the most important issues is the need to include victims of the armed conflict as active agents in the process of implementing the law. Although the participation of conflict victims, including women, is a fundamental component of the regulatory framework of Law 1448 of 2011, numerous social, economic, political, institutional and cultural obstacles have curtailed their participation and constitute a threat to the implementation processes.

Ultimately, if the armed conflict is not resolved, and obstacles to the full participation of wo-men are not removed, all of this could lead to increasing frustration regarding the possibilities of overcoming the armed conflict and achieving the full enjoyment of the rights to truth, justice, and reparations.

This is why it is important to analyze how the obstacles to participation may affect the implementation of this very ambitious public policy. In the case of women, the obstacles cannot just be explained in terms of the chronic deficit of participation in Colombian society; they are also the result of unequal power relations in which women are assigned a marginal and generally subordinate role to men.

Bearing in mind that women make up almost half of the victims of the internal armed conflict and that the patterns of violence they suffer may be different, their participation is crucial to ensure their experien-ces and suggestions influence the public policies that affect them. Likewise, it is essential that the obstacles to their participation and that of their organizations in the implementation of Law 1448 of 2011 be identified.

The implementation of the law requires an enormous effort by the state, both in terms of public institu-tions and public servants, in order to deal with the humanitarian tragedy the country is experiencing. It also requires the active participation of society. Thus, the organizing of society in general is essential as is that of the victims of the internal armed conflict and women.

This report is the result of a process of research and work with women victims in three regions of the country (Cesar, Meta and the Capital District of Bogotá) carried out by the Casa de la Mujer in con-junction with the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) and the German Agency for

4 Article 3 of Law 1448 of 2011 considers as victims those persons who individually or collectively have suffered harm as a consequence of breaches of International Humanitarian Law or serious and gross violations of international human rights norms that occurred in the context of the internal armed conflict from January 1, 1985 onwards. Also considered victims are the spouse, permanent partner, same sex couples and immediate family members of the direct victim, when this person had been killed or disappeared. Likewise, those persons who had come to harm when helping a victim in danger or to prevent their victimization are also considered to be victims. Under the law members of illegal armed groups are not considered to be victims, except in the case of children or adolescents who were forcibly recruited and who left the illegal armed groups when they were still minors. Spouses, permanent partners or relatives of members of armed groups may be considered as victims but not as indirect victims for the harm suffered by the members of the said groups.5 Ministerio del Interior y de Justicia, Ley de Víctimas y Restitución de Tierras, 7.

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International Cooperation (GIZ). The fieldwork was carried out between September 1 and December 31, 2012, and the desk research continued to June 30, 2013.

The three departments were chosen because of specific challenges that arose in implementing Law 1448 of 2011. Such challenges include a high degree of regional fragmentation, the varying capacity of the state in the territories, and the different levels of organization of victims, both in terms of mixed and wo-men-only groups. In each area (the Caribbean in the north, the Plains to the east of the country and the characteristics of the capital in the center), the armed conflict imposes specific conditions. These include the organic nature of paramilitarism in Cesar, the dynamics of the arrival of the paramilitary groups and their confrontation with the guerrillas in Meta, and the reception of victims and demobilized population groups in Bogotá. Also, Casa de la Mujer and GIZ have links with women’s groups and public institutions in these regions.

The specific aim of the research was “to establish at a local and departmental level what the obstacles in the participatory processes are for women and their organizations in terms of the implementation of, and assistance received under, the Victims and Land Restitution Law in the departments of Cesar, Meta and in the District Capital of Bogotá.”

Accordingly, the research looks at the obstacles faced by women in participating in the mechanisms con-templated in Law 1448 of 2011 and, in addition, contributes to disseminating information about the law to equip women with the tools to demand their rights to truth, justice, and reparations.

The report is divided into seven parts:

1. The first part deals with the methodology used in writing the report. It is important to point out that, as part of the analysis, excerpts of testimony from women workshop participants and from interviews with public authorities and functionaries are included in sections 3, 4 and 5. The information conve-yed through the voices of the women and men who took part in this project allows us to have a more comprehensive and grounded view of the obstacles found in this investigation.

2. The second part deals with the most important aspects of participation in the framework of Law 1448 of 2011, such as the transitory participatory spaces and the Protocol on Effective Participation of Victims of the Armed Conflict (hereinafter the Protocol on Effective Participation).

3. The third part identifies the obstacles to women’s participation that arise because they are women. Hence, reference is made to all those barriers that have to do with the particular position of women that prevent or hamper their participation.

4. The fourth part analyzes the socio-political and economic obstacles that constrain the participation of women. Also included are some of the obstacles that flow from the economic, social and cultural con-texts in which women live, as well as from the fact that many have had limited access to education. .

5. The fifth part examines the obstacles that arise from institutional barriers and the aptitude of public servants. This section draws attention to the nature of the reparations scheme itself, underlining some deficiencies when it comes to properly incorporating the participation of victims, particularly women. In addition, it looks at problems concerning the suitability and experience of public servants to carry out the duties given to them in the framework of the Victims Law.

6. The sixth part presents the conclusions stemming from the analysis of the various obstacles identified through this research.


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7. Lastly, the seventh part offers practical and strategic recommendations for achieving real participation by women in the mechanisms of the Victims Law. These are aimed at government bodies at both the national and local level, to ensure the full implementation of the Victims Law and facilitate the transformative potential of reparations for victims of the armed conflict. achieve a transformative reparation of the victims of the armed conflict.

María Camila Moreno MúneraDirector, ICTJ Office in Colombia

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2. Research Methodology

The methodology of the research employs concepts and procedures based on feminist theory. Through these, we can discern not only the conditions of oppression and subordination operating socially and politically on women, but also the set of deeply entrenched societal norms that maintain and reproduce this unjust order. So it is fitting that we listen to women and also to those responsible for dealing with them in order to better understand how these mechanisms and conditions impact their social and political participation.

Some basic premises guided the search for information, the organization, and analysis of the collected data. These assumptions were:

a. The state and society must guarantee the objective and subjective conditions for women victims to exercise effective participation.

b. The bodies and organizations involved in the participatory processes contemplated by Law 1448 of 2011 need to contribute to deconstructing the feminine subjectivities that see women in terms of their relationship to others (husbands, children, and family, amongst others).

c. The state must enhance the capabilities and skills of women to advance their individual and collective autonomy as well as acknowledge the diversity and complexity of their situation.

d. The state, and society in general, must grant political and social legitimacy to women and their orga-nizations.

e. There is a democratic and citizenship deficit for women that translates into the under-representation of women in popularly elected posts and positions of power, in both the state and private sectors.

f. Threats against the lives and physical integrity of women constitute obstacles to political participation as a method of challenging social injustice and exclusion.

The methodology included qualitative tools of analysis to examine the obstacles and difficulties of both organized and unorganized women victims. To that end, primary sources, such as interviews and testimo-nies, and secondary sources, such as documents and aggregated data, were used.

The primary information was gathered in two ways: semi-structured interviews and workshops.


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Interviews were carried out with:

a. Departmental and municipal authorities.

b. Public servants.

c. Women victims of the armed conflict.

In all, seventeen people (six women and eleven men) were interviewed. The majority of them were attached to different local government offices in the chosen municipalities and their perspective allowed us to identify, according to their opinion, the main obstacles that women face in taking part in the spaces contemplated in the Victims Law. These men and women were chosen on the basis of their direct involve-ment with the participatory mechanisms in the law.

The researchers employed three types of forms, one for each type of interviewee, designed to elicit respon-ses regarding obstacles to the participation of women in the Victims Law regime. This information was transcribed, organized thematically, systematized and analyzed.

Another tool to collect information was the holding of a series of workshops with both organized and unorganized women victims of violence in the context of the armed conflict. In all, six workshops were carried out (two in Valledupar, two in Villavicencio and two in Bogotá) in which 131 women victims took part (see Appendix 1).

Besides gathering firsthand information, the workshops sought to educate the participants on aspects of the Victims Law and provide a space where they could critically reflect on their situation and problems.

The information gathered through interviews was cross-referenced with the workshops carried out with women in the selected municipalities and also with the data gathered from the review of relevant literature.

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3. Participation of Victims in Law 1448 of 2011

In the formulation of Law 1448 of 2011, victims demanded guarantees for the full exercise of their right to participate in reparations processes. These proposals were incorporated in the text of the law, which includes participation as a cross-cutting priority for its implementation.6

Article 14 of Law 1448 incorporated the principle of joint participation, according to which victims’ active participation is necessary in order to overcome their evident vulnerability. Similarly, Article 28, on “the rights of victims,” enshrines the right to participate in the development, implementation, and monitoring of this public policy.

The principle of participation is also incorporated into the area of restitution, which involves victims in the planning and management of a victim’s return or relocation, as well as their reintegration into society. In addition, strengthening the effective participation of populations whose rights have been violated, or are at risk of violation, in their community, and social and political contexts, is considered to be a guaran-tee of non-repetition.

In general terms, the law contains norms to guarantee the effective participation of victims in the different stages of reparations. Thus, for example, Article 107 indicates that two representatives of the National Roundtable for the Participation of Victims – one of the participatory mechanisms – shall be members of the Board of Directors of the Special Administrative Unit for the Management of the Restitution of Stolen Lands.7

In terms of the measures of satisfaction, Article 139 orders that the national Government by way of the National Plan for Attention and Comprehensive Reparations for Victims,8 carry out such actions as to restore the dignity of victims and to disseminate the truth about what happened. It notes that this requires the participation of the victims.

6 This refers to the effective participation of the victims, their organizations and social and human rights organizations as an integral part of the different stages of the law, i.e. the design, implementation, execution, monitoring, and evaluation of this public policy.7 The Board of Directors of the Special Administrative Unit for the Management of the Restitution of Stolen Lands is charged with leading activities of the Special Administrative Unit for the Management of the Restitution of Stolen Lands, this being the body established under Article 103 of Law 1448 of 2011 to “serve as the national Government’s administrative body for the restitution of stolen land.”8 Article 175 ordains that the national Government will ensure, through a regulatory decree, the adoption of the National Plan for the Attention and Comprehensive Reparations of Victims, which “will establish the required mechanisms to implement all the measures dealing with attention, aid and reparations contemplated in this law.” The article also stipulates that the “national Government will promote the inclusion of victims in the design and monitoring of the Plan for Attention and Reparations for Victims.”


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Further, Articles 192 and 194 enshrine the “duty of the state to guarantee the effective participation of victims regarding the design, implementation, execution, and feeling (sic) of compliance and the plans, projects and programs that are created through it.” This includes guaranteeing the means and tools to adequately develop participation, such as the election of victims’ representatives to decision-making and monitoring bodies foreseen in the law.

At the same time, victims should enjoy the right to access adequate information and participatory spaces should be designed at a national, departmental and municipal level so victims can effectively participate. Thus, Article 193 of the law mandates that the Roundtables for the Participation of Victims at a munici-pal, district, departmental and national level should create the conditions to allow the meaningful partici-pation of women, girls, boys, adolescents, and older adults. Also, organizations that defend the rights of victims and their organizations should take part in these roundtables. These spaces aim to guarantee the effective participation of victims through activities such as:

• The election of their representatives to the various bodies stipulated in the law and the plans, projects and programs created through it.

• Exercises in accountability.

• The carrying out of citizen oversight activities.

With the aim of making progress in their compliance with the guarantees of participation, Article 194 states that the mayors, governors and the Executive Committee for the Attention and Reparations of Victims9 must have a protocol on effective participation. Likewise it states that the protocol must include mechanisms to guarantee that public bodies that make decisions on the design, implementation, and execution of plans and programs for reparations forward their draft decisions to the Roundtables for the Participation of Victims at all levels. The aim of this article is to afford the members of the respective roundtables the opportunity to comment upon draft decisions. The public bodies charged with decision-making should evaluate comments made by the Roundtables for the Participation of Victims and respond to each of the comments made. Once the comments have been accepted or rejected, the respective round-table should be informed and provided with the corresponding justification.

Subsequently, Decree 4800 of 2011 assigned the task of designing the Protocol on Participation10 to the Unit for Attention and Comprehensive Reparations to Victims (hereinafter the Victims Unit).11 Other procedures and mechanisms to regulate and guarantee participation were developed in the same Decree 4800 of 2011 and Decree 4802 of 201112 and Decree 0790 of 2012.13

9 The body charged with designing and adopting public policy in the area of attention, aid, and reparations to victims in coordination with the National System on Attention and Reparations to Victims (Article 162). The president of the Republic will preside over the Executive Committee (Article 164).10 Article 285 of Decree 4800 of 2011. According to this article the process must meet with the approval of the departmental, district and municipal bodies and include the participation of victims.11 This body was set up under Article 103 to regulate and promote the various measures and policies that favor victims of the armed conflict.12 Article 3(5) sets out that the Victims Unit will implement mechanisms and strategies for victims’ effective participation with a differentiated focus in the design of the plans, programs, and projects for the attention, assistance, and comprehensive reparations. Article 17 sets out the duties of the Sub-directorate on Participation of the Victims Unit and Article 17(1) gives this sub-directorate the responsibility for carrying out the activities and necessary research to design the Protocol on Effective Participation in dialogue with victims and other actors in spaces set up for that purpose. Additionally, Article 17(4) establishes a duty to establish mechanisms for effective and timely participation of victims in the design, implementation, execution, and evaluation of policies under the terms set out by Law 1448 of 2011 and other norms that modify, add, or regulate it.13 Article 4 transferred the duties of the National System for Integral Attention to IDPs (SNAIPD) and the National System for Comprehensive Attention and Reparations of Victims (SNARIV) and the National Council for Comprehensive Attention for the Displaced to the Executive Committee for Comprehensive Attention and Reparations to Victims.

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Transitory Spaces for Participation

In 2012, due to a delay in setting up all the Roundtables for the Participation of Victims and in the de-sign and implementation of the Protocol on Effective Participation, the Victims Unit issued Circular 004 of 2012. This circular created transitory spaces for dialogue at a national level and in the municipalities, districts, and departments.

The transitory spaces were set up to include and empower victims on local and national bodies as well as in the discussions and design of the Protocol on Effective Participation. Given its transitory nature, this mechanism was in operation for only five months between August 2012 and March 31, 2013.

The transitory spaces for victims’ participation had three responsibilities:

• Discuss the Protocol on Effective Participation.

• Choose victims’ representatives for a limited term.

• Participate in elaborating territorial action plans.

It is important to underline that this space came out of a proposal made by civil society organizations to remedy the lack of participation by victims in the whole social architecture and policy of the National Roundtable for the Participation of Victims, as laid out in Law 1448 of 2011.

Having participated in the national transitory space, Casa de la Mujer notes that the most serious prob-lems in the functioning of these spaces are:

• The lack of concrete guarantees to facilitate the participation of victims in carrying out their duties.

• Restricted calls for participation in the various spaces.

• Difficulties in the democratic procedures for designating members of the roundtables and representa-tives to the various technical subcommittees.

• The differing political views within victims’ organizations that make it difficult to reach a consensus on proposals, reducing the effectiveness of policy advocacy efforts.

• The lack of commitment from local public institutions in promoting and facilitating the participation of victims as laid down in the law.

These problems also affect men. However, for women victims these are additional limitations related to their roles as mothers and the weakness of their organizations, the lack of recognition they have in mixed organizations, and interference from male leaders in affairs that were the remit of women.

Protocol on Effective Participation

In May 2013, the Victims Unit approved the Protocol on Effective Participation of Victims of the Armed Conflict. This protocol is of profound importance to victims as the main tool regulating processes for their participation.


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The Victims Unit drew up the protocol incorporating contributions made by victims in the transi-tory spaces for dialogue and the roundtables on strengthening the organizations of internally displaced people. Regional workshops, forums and online consultations were carried out in order to gather propos-als from civil society victims’ organizations, organs of control, international and territorial bodies, enti-ties from the SNARIV and the Congressional Monitoring Commission of Law 1448.14 In addition to making concrete proposals, these interventions brought attention to violations that had previously been given scant attention.

The aim of the Protocol is to provide a framework that guarantees the effective participation of victims in the planning, execution and control of public policy in the SNARIV. It also seeks to guarantee victims’ real, effective interventions in the local, regional and national citizens’ participatory spaces.15

The Protocol defines spaces of effective participation for victims in the following terms:

The body of participatory spaces set up under Law 1448 of 2011 which at the municipal, district, departmental and national level serve to guarantee the input and representation of victims and their organizations in settings where the public policies developed in the framework of Law 1448 of 2011 and other related and complementary norms are designed, planned, executed and monitored (Article 5, Protocol on Effective Participation).

The Protocol includes a catalogue of principles,16 amongst which are gender equity and a differentiated focus. This recognizes that there are various victimized populations, each with their own particular cha-racteristics such as age, gender, ethnic background, sexual orientation or disability. In acknowledging this diversity, the state offers special guarantees in exercising the right to effective participation. At the same time victims’ participation is mandated in all activities in the public sphere, particularly the participation of those who suffered disproportionally from the violence of the armed conflict. As is explicitly mentioned in Law 1448 of 2011, these groups include women, children, adolescents, disabled people, indigenous people, Afro-Colombian, Raizal and Palanquero communities and the Romani people.

The scope of the Protocol matches the progress made in recognizing the range of victims, inclusion, and a differentiated focus with a women victims’ rights perspective. The Protocol is a tool that provides mecha-nisms for dialogue amongst victims and between them and the state. Furthermore, it seeks to gradually install a type of dialogue that transforms conflicts and the formulation of policies, programs and projects in attention, reparations and protection. As a tool, the Protocol puts to the test the social and institutional capacity to protect and fulfill the rights of victims. Consequently, it can be improved and adapted in light of the lessons learnt throughout its implementation.

14 Article 202 of Law 1448 of 2011 establishes the Congressional Commission on Monitoring Law 1448, which is tasked with monitoring the application of the law, receiving complaints regarding the same, and revising the reports which are presented to the national Government.15 Article 1 of Resolution 0388 of May 10, 2013 by way of which the Protocol on Effective Participation is adopted.16 Congreso de la República. Ley de Víctimas y Restitución de Tierras, 19.

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4. Obstacles Arising from Their Status as Women

Obstacles to the full participation of women were identified through the women’s workshops and the interviews with the authorities and public servants. Through our fieldwork these obstacles emerged in the workshops and the interviews and were mentioned and reflected upon both by the women and the public servants.

As is explained in greater detail below, these obstacles are the product of patriarchy in all its manifes-tations, from the material (e.g. the persistent difference in salaries received by men and women for the same work) to the symbolic (e.g. the roles in society and in the home which are considered “normal” or acceptable for men and women). Thus, the barriers are the result of ideas about what is feminine, which is in turn the result of the social construction of what it means to be a woman.

Firstly we look at the difficulties faced by women in recognizing that they have rights, including the right to effective participation. We then proceed to analyze their lack of knowledge about their rights, the laws, and the regulatory procedures and policies that protect them.

Women Do Not Recognize their Capacity for Political Action or Their Right to Effective Participation

The first obstacle to the political and social participation of women is their difficulty in acknowledging that they have a right to participate in the public sphere. This limitation is the result of a patriarchal society, which makes distinctions between women and men and molds these distinctions to not only favor men over women, but also to transform this arbitrary cultural act into something which is perceived as natural.17 At the same time this patriarchal paradigm validates some positions and invalidates others, which perpetuates these same distinctions as natural and inherent.18 In this way women internalize, throu-gh socialization processes, a devalued image of themselves and ways of relating to others that place them in a subordinate and disadvantageous position.

On many occasions women are conscious of the force of the male order which imposes itself as natural. To illustrate the point, in the workshops, women described how their husbands or partners “do not let them participate.” This hindrance to participation is based on cultural mandates that restrict women’s freedom and their ability to make decisions for themselves. Such cultural patterns contribute to an atmosphere that neither supports nor recognizes the right of women to participate in political and social arenas.

17 It should be noted that the patriarchal order is also harmful to men. It is a system that dictates how men should behave, feel and think in line with various social norms, and play a series of roles assigned to their gender.18 Gómez, Subjetivación y feminismo: Análisis de un manifiesto político, 3.


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We have to ask their permission in order to go to certain meetings or lie . . . my friend brought me and I had to tell him [the husband] that we were going to something to do with the church because otherwise he wouldn’t let me come (testimony from a female participant in Villavicencio workshop October 21to 23, 2012).

The explanation for this reticence to participate, pointed out by the women, is to be found in the hegemonic male order that, in the main, reserves a place for women in domestic life and only to a lesser extent a role in public life. It is precisely in the normalization of “male mandates” that their fear, of not only participating and taking on leadership roles but also of taking part in debates and discussions, can be understood. As some women pointed out:

When we have to choose between staying at home and doing our household chores or being a leader, the majority of us choose to stay at home (Valledupar workshop September 17 to 19, 2012).

I think the most important thing is to take care of the family, our husbands are better able to speak in public and participate, also the authorities pay greater heed to them (Bogotá workshop April 25 to 27, 2013).

Another sign of the difficulties in acknowledging their own capacity for political action is the fear they have of participating, especially in spaces where they have to speak in public. Often, this leads to them preferring to abstain and not expressing their ideas:

Sometimes you are afraid to speak and when someone else speaks you realize that what they said was what you had been thinking . . . but it is fear that prevents you from speaking (Bogotá workshop April 25 to 27, 2013).

Women, we hold back from doing things, we are afraid, we aren’t sure of ourselves (Bogotá workshop December 10 to 12, 2012).

We are afraid to speak in public and get it wrong . . . we don’t know our rights (Bogotá workshop December 10 to 12, 2012).

This lack of knowledge is a barrier to their participation as it creates conditions for discrimination, which in most cases are not visible because women assume them to be a natural part of their status. The norma-lization of these discriminatory practices prevents women from effectively enjoying their rights and, in many ways, conditions them into accepting a marginal role as victims in processes of enforceability.

Some of the participants said that the lack of autonomy in deciding what to do with their time and their lives constitutes an obstacle to their participation. Many of them (nearly all of them housewives) say they do not take part because they are always busy in the home dealing with things that concern the private sphere and are surprised to learn of the existence of “so many spaces, workshops and things to do as wo-men”. Others point out that their status as victims of the armed conflict has accentuated this withdrawal into domestic matters, which limits their knowledge about and increases their distance from the “impor-tant things that must be done” to demand their rights.

However, the women who have distanced themselves from public life as a consequence of the effects of the armed conflict argue that this is due to the need to find stability in their lives, as well as an anonymity which brings tranquility. Above all, they are concerned about the security of their families given that the armed conflict has not only taken the lives of many of their loved ones, but also stigmatized and re-victi-mized them.

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For the women who attended the workshops it is evident that this citizenship and rights deficit leads to them having a low opinion of their own experiences and limits their participation.

We don’t take advantage of the participatory spaces, nor are we aware of the issues that are dealt with there . . . we women are subordinate in our responses to participation.

We are afraid to take decisions, when you are offered the chance to be a leader on the board of an or-ganization; you tend to prefer that it be a man. When we receive political proposals we are wary and as we don’t have any experience we say no and let the men be the ones who do the work (testimony of various female participants in the workshops).

Various women commented that they are constrained by men not only in their homes but also in their organizations. They say that in the organizations it seems as if the leadership posts were reserved for men only, whilst women are only expected to call people to the meeting, help in the community hall, organize the help that arrives and serve as caregivers. Thus, the socially-accepted male order that relegates them to tasks bereft of power is reproduced, while politically relevant roles are given to men.

Women Don’t Know Their Rights

A second obstacle for women is the lack of knowledge about their rights, the laws and the regulatory pro-cedures and policies that protect them. This obstacle is directly related to the previous one, partly because, as was pointed out, the lack of knowledge comes from having internalized the male order. This translates into a reticence to deal with issues pertaining to the collective interest, as well as into a lack of interest in developing the capacity and ability to participate.

Some of the participants in the workshops said that women feel “very lazy when it comes to reading and training in things that would serve them politically”. Another female leader said that even thou-gh they are given information about their rights, many of them never read the documents. On the contrary, “they throw them away or give them to their children to play with” (testimonies of female participants in the workshops).

The workshops demonstrated women’s lack of knowledge about their rights and their status as victims. Many of them, for example, are unaware of the significance of enforcement and less still do they un-derstand judicial logic and rights. This means they do not know how to make freedom of information requests, writs of amparo, or legal petitions or requests, which means that the abuses committed against them frequently remain unreported and unpunished. Faced with this situation, some leaders insist on the need for capacity-building for grassroots organizations.

There do exist norms that give special protection to women victims as targets of very specific types of vio-lence. However, the circumstances in which they live, the persistence of the armed conflict and the com-plete lack of adequate institutional spaces designed to assist women do nothing to guarantee this special protection. Added to this is the lack of knowledge many of them have about the possibility of reporting the acts they have been victims of, and of demanding justice. Likewise, many of the crimes against them remain unpunished due to a fear that they or their families will be accused or persecuted. Such situations are not reported, particularly in the case of victims of sexual violence.

Added to their lack of knowledge about their rights is their lack of knowledge about the laws, norma-tive procedures and policies that protect them. Not only do the large majority of women victims know nothing about the Victims Law, but in general they know nothing about the measures that protect them.


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Furthermore, they are unaware of the role and responsibilities of public servants in guaranteeing and protecting their rights. As one public servant put it:

Ignorance of the regulations may be the first obstacle that one notices, perhaps this hasn’t been ack-nowledged in some sectors (interview with public servant Villavicencio, October 18, 2012).

In relation to knowledge of the laws that protect their rights, the women, in turn, noted that:

If I had been told this before, I would have demanded my rights . . . I had no idea that law said so many things (Valledupar workshop September 20-22, 2012).

Various participants spoke of the obstacles they have to face in order to access the system for attention and reparations for victims and the lack of knowledge about the new mechanisms for demanding their rights. This is due to the deficit in training and information for women and the chronic failings of participatory models and citizenship-building in the country. This is seen in the lack of knowledge women victims have about where to go in cases of violence against them.

The biggest obstacle as far as I am concerned is the lack of knowledge about the Victims Law. This is the biggest one because, in general terms, we haven’t raised awareness amongst the victims, just amongst a few . . . We don’t have clear information, not even about where to go in these processes. I am fighting so that the entity or the person over us, which is the Victims Unit, carries out a training session on this issue (Bogotá workshop December 10-12, 2012).

The situation that arises from this obstacle was summed up by one functionary, who said:

The lack of knowledge about public policy is always going to be a problem. If you don’t know the law, you don’t know your rights, you are not clear about them (because you may know them, but you are not clear about them because someone told you any old thing) or you misinterpret them, then this means they can confuse you, or cheat you, they violate your rights or what you demand is not viable (interview with public functionary Valledupar September 19, 2012).

Added to this general lack of knowledge are the difficulties arising from the specific dynamics of the armed conflict: the tearing apart of the social fabric, the destruction of their economic livelihoods, the emotional scars and traumas caused by the atrocities and the uprooting of communities, to mention but a few. This situation presents extraordinary challenges for the state when it comes to guaranteeing the participation of women victims in this particular measure concerning conflict-related crimes.

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5. Sociopolitical and Economic Obstacles

Participation Limited to Its Formal Dimension

Participation must stimulate a critical, proactive conscience in the citizenry, while broadening and transforming power relations between citizens and the state and between men and women. However, the current research demonstrates that the persistence of a model of participation characterized by a serious underrepresentation of women and the reduction of their limited participation to a mere formality consti-tute a serious obstacle to women victims’ participation becoming a vehicle for changing their situation.

Political participation in Colombia has significant conceptual and practical shortcomings. It goes beyond the notion that not everyone participates and not everyone can take part in everything; it is frequently treated as a mere formality. This view can be seen in practice:

1. Understanding participation as something that is necessary in so far as it is politically correct, even though it has no bearing on decision making.

2. Limiting participation to a set of established mechanisms.

3. Conceiving participation as a practice limited by law, i.e., participation goes no further than the letter of the statutory provisions.

A formalistic understanding of participation is a significant barrier to its potential to solve the problems facing Colombian society through inclusive dialogue and ensure that institutions adequately respond to the problems of all Colombians.

The tendency to reduce participation to a formality can be found in the historic dearth of participation that has characterized social and political inclusion in Colombia. This dynamic applies particularly to women and other population groups that have been excluded from decision-making processes and the centers of power. Consequently, instrumentalist and utilitarian views have frequently shaped participation in the country. This often means that participatory spaces that do exist and the participation of women in them (including victims) only, or mainly, serve to justify decisions in which they have not been involved or meet political or legal requirements of those decision-making processes.

Interviews and workshops held by ICTJ uncovered significant evidence that participation is seen as a for-mality that does not allow participants, particularly women, to effectively influence the decision-making process. Some workshop participants, particularly the public servants, suggested that participation was just something that had to be done but did not affect the course of administrative actions. Some women said participation did not bring any benefits to them or their families. The following testimonies show how this view inhibits women from taking part:


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[Participation] is useless, because they are not going to listen to you, they often won’t even lower themselves to dealing with you! - Female Participant, Valledupar

We have taken part in many spaces, but it is still the same, they promise and promise and nothing changes - Female Participant, Villavicencio

Going to all those meetings is a waste of time and means spending the little money that we have. It is all just promises but we get nothing from it. - Female Participant, Bogotá

These views were also quite strong among public servants, but their reasons were different. When asked what proposals the women had and what chances there were that they would be put into action, their answers were vague and unenthusiastic. One government official said that women’s reliance on limited economic resources to participate in the municipal decision-making process was a challenge:

Nowadays, many mayors do not include in the development plans . . . resources for the victims’ plans . . . We had a meeting here with various bodies, where the army, the police, the mayor’s office, the governor’s office, the Victims Unit, the Public Defender’s Office and the Prosecutor’s office took part, where we made a proposal . . . to see how we could get to the rural areas in order to take statements from victims. Everyone was willing. How many times have we actually done this? Not once. The re-ason: budgetary . . . as many victims are poor, they have no money . . . but we don’t have the means. How can I move 10 or 20 people to a rural area if I have no transport or no money? - Government Official, Valledupar

The majority expressed a similar view on women victims’ proposals as the following:

No definitive conclusions have been reached, as this process is just starting . . . We always take women victims into consideration. We have had meetings with each one of them, assemblies . . . we have given them space here (they had an election recently), many of them took part. In other words, they always participate; inclusion does exist on this issue. - Government Official, Valledupar

This view of participation as limited to a formal or instrumental end is worsened by a corporatist view of it, whereby representation processes are conceived to only benefit the winners, so that less cohesive or weaker groups with weaker traditions of participation are prevented from meaningfully participating, even when they do not sideline themselves. As interviewees pointed out, this diminished women victims’ participation.

Someone is chosen (a victims’ representative) for something and the organizations to which the chosen person does not belong feel defeated. In other words: “She does not represent us.” There is an extremely exclusive view of the issue. - Government Official, Bogotá

The women who go to those spaces don’t even represent us, they are only there to defend their own interests.- Female Participant, Bogotá

Look, it’s like this: only those who are well connected go there, hoping to gain something for their group. The other women, we are of no importance. - Female Participant, Villavicencio

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Generally, public servants pointed to the existence of participatory spaces for women victims, the par-ticipation of victims in them, and the commitment of municipal and departmental administrations to participatory exercises. However, they had difficulty linking the achievements of this participation to the way in which these exercises matched the aims of the municipal administrations. In this regard, it must be mentioned that the current research did not compare the treatment of proposals made by male victims and those by women victims.

In relation to the second limiting factor, “limiting participation to a set of established mechanisms,” ICTJ research showed that participation is understood both by women and public servants as something that is limited to formal procedures and how they are carried out.

Women form part of the human rights committees in the municipalities. Here in the department they have joined the Humanitarian Roundtable; we have a section there. They do workshops and all sorts of things with the Public Defender’s Office . . . These workshops are small scale, repeating what has already been repeated. We seem to be full of workshops. For example, now that the Victims’ Law is popular, everyone is giving trainings on this law, but they are just workshops. - Government Official and Victim, Villavicencio

The main idea among the majority of public servants is that participation is about guaranteeing participa-tory spaces for women and women victims. Having been asked about the results of participation, one of them stated:

According to the information from the municipal ombudsperson’s office, women have been guaran-teed participation in various transitional justice subcommittees and on the departmental victims’ roundtables. - Government Official, Villavicencio

This attitude on the part of public servants of prioritizing the count of how many participatory bod-ies have been created contrasts with the difficulty they have in talking about the contributions made by women victims and their organizations. Generally, it seems to be more important to show participation based on the number of spaces created than to demonstrate their usefulness by identifying contributions made by those involved in those spaces. This may be indicative of their understanding of participation as only a set of established mechanisms.

These two aspects are closely related to the last factor: participation is seen, both by public servants and some victims, as limited by and only concerned with the law. When asked about the mechanisms and spaces for women victims’ participation, they all replied that the only participatory spaces that they knew of that were functioning were those “in the law” or those “contemplated in the law.”

Socio-Economic Condition of Women

To gain a broader view of the persisting inequality and discrimination in the lives of Colombian women, an analysis of their socio-economic condition must be linked to an understanding of power relations and exclusion in all areas of life. There is empirical evidence that women do not enjoy equal opportunities to access wealth, resources, or services; that poverty affects men and women differently; and that despite hav-ing similar educational levels, women do not have the same work opportunities or salaries.

Knowing this empirical reality is insufficient. Rather, one has to ask to what degree are women being prepared to exercise their citizenship in order to fully participate in building a democratic society, where their rights are recognized and wealth is redistributed in a fair manner.


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Exacerbating matters, if women and men do not have equal access to the full enjoyment of their rights in areas seemingly unrelated to conflict, this asymmetry is only made more profound in the context of armed conflict.

From this point of view, information gathered from women participants showed that their poor socio-economic conditions generate obstacles to their participation in the Victims’ Law structure. The current research shows that even though material means did not dictate participation, there is a relationship between having certain material resources and the willingness to participate.

It is because of this relationship between material resources and conditions that enable women to exercise their citizenship that this study decided to include women’s socio-economic conditions as a structural obstacle to their participation.

Some of the most significant variables in the socio-economic conditions of women participants in the workshops are: 75 percent are aged 30-60, and they have an average of four children. This is notably higher than the national average of 2.1 children. Regarding education, 85 percent had completed one or more years of high school, but only 27 percent had completed high school. Furthermore, the majority had very unstable employment, with 86 percent of the women not engaged in formal, paid employment. Some of the workshop participants commented that:

I work in people’s households and I earn five thousand pesos [2.5 dollars] and with that I feed my children and myself. My husband can’t get work. - Female Participant, Valledupar

They expressed how their low educational levels were obstacles to their participation:

When you haven’t studied, you need a lot of capacity building in order to understand all those laws that you teach us about. - Female Participant, Valledupar

When you don’t read or study, nice refined words to speak well just don’t come out, and that is why they treat us victims the way they do. - Female Participant Valledupar

The difficulty of entering the job market and obtaining a stable income sufficient for financial indepen-dence significantly affects women victims’ possibilities of participating. One of the government officials interviewed in Bogotá put it quite well:

For women who are heads-of-household, it is very difficult for them to participate because besides being displaced, they continue to look after their children, parents . . . When can they go to a mee-ting? How can they leave their children alone? This is a very tough barrier. - Government Official, Bogotá

Other women highlighted the difficult situations they and their families face, particularly those who have been forcibly displaced. In the workshops, they related their experiences of begging, social inactivity, a lack of state aid, and the lack of means to go to meetings to which they, as victims, had been invited. Many of them do not take part in such meetings due to the difficulty of leaving their work and other obligations, or simply because they cannot cover the most basic expenses. One participant reported:

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If you are invited to a meeting, you don’t have the money to go and they don’t always pay for your transport. - Female Participant, Valledupar

Some of the public servants interviewed acknowledged this situation:

There is a limitation and that is that the victims don’t have the resources to access the participatory spaces. If a victim wants to have one or two working days to formulate public policy, go to works-hops or events, well, they need the resources to at least cover their transport. - Government Official, Valledupar

On this point, some of those interviewed, particularly the regional public authorities, said that they had made proposals to national bodies about the possibility of making payments that allow victims to cover their expenses in order to participate. In fact, there are precedents for this in other transitional justice contexts outside Colombia. For example, in East Timor, in order to facilitate the women’s participation in therapeutic workshops carried out by the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation (CAVR), participants were given small subsidies.19 This positive experience shows that this type of initiative is pos-sible and could even have a significant impact on victims’ lives.

Another problem is the lack of continuous participation, which is linked to power relations between men and women and the division of labor along gender lines within the family. This is due, in part, to prob-lems associated with the need to balance family life, work, and political participation. Added to this is the persistence of social attitudes and prejudices about women as social and political leaders. The testimony on this point was very revealing:

I am the president of the organization but I often can’t go because I have to tend to my children or get food for them. And besides my children, I have grandchildren that are dependent on me. - Female Participant, Valledupar

When we speak and there are men present, they listen to the men. - Female Participant, Bogotá

Added to this is the incapacity of the state, which has never been able to change the structural cause of the poverty women live in, nor has it had the political will to do so. The Constitutional Court has recognized that the state has the responsibility to guarantee the effective enjoyment of rights and transform the barri-ers that place women in situations of greater vulnerability (Sentence T-025 of 2004 and Writ 092 of 2008 of the Colombian Constitutional Court). One government official interviewed for this study referred to this lack of political will:

I think it has to do with political will and resources; not just about [economic] resources, because when you link participation to resources there are huge risks . . . I don’t think the question should just be about “resources versus participation,” but rather it should be about political will, which is in shorter supply than money in Colombia. - Government official, Bogotá

As can be seen from the women’s testimonies, their socio-economic conditions and the fact they were entirely responsible for chores within the household were obstacles that frequently prevented their

19 Wandita, Campbell-Nelson and Leong Pereira, Learning to Engender Reparations in Timor-Leste: Reaching Out to Female Victims.


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participation. Moreover, these barriers determined how they took part in debate and had an impact on whether they remained part of the participatory mechanisms.

The Armed Conflict and Violence Against Women

Other main obstacles that hampered women’s participation were the persistence of the armed conflict in their territories and the presence of agents who continue to use violence, such as the guerrillas, the criminal gangs (successors of the paramilitary groups that were supposedly demobilized), and the security forces.

These actors commit a variety of violent acts, such as threats, harassment, persecution, murder, enforced disappearance, sexual violence, and forced displacement. Women who have taken on leadership roles have become specific targets for these types of crimes. The situation for women in the three areas selected for this research was no different from that of women in other parts of the country where the armed conflict was ongoing.

In recent years the threats and harassment of female leaders and their organizations in Colombia has intensified, particularly in the case of those who lead land restitution processes and those who form part of organizations monitoring Constitutional Court Writ 092 of 2008 on recourse to the law for women victims of sexual violence.

One of the participants in the workshops, a community leader who had also stood for election to the municipal council, said that the persecution of her daughter and the enforced disappearance of two other children had, in the last two years, curtailed her participation in the community and made her step back from leadership roles:

Those men [the paramilitaries] came to our area, and one of them fell in love with my daughter and wanted to take her away. I had to pluck up the courage, and everyone told me not to, but I went out and crossed the river and I went to the commander and I asked him why he wanted my daughter and why he had ordered her death and he said that she should be his wife. I told him that it would be over my dead body and that I wasn’t going to send her anywhere . . . My niece, the cousin of my daughter, went off with one of them and that is why they didn’t kill my daughter, because her boyfriend asked the commander not to kill her. - Female Participant, Valledupar

In a different case, a woman said that she had been a victim of sexual violence because she was a leader. Even though she had continued as a leader of a victims’ organization (she managed to get her daughter out of the country through a protection program), this experience has on many occasions caused her to step back from her role as leader and limit her participation. She reported how the sexual violence she experienced was a weapon to curtail her participation. The perpetrators told her:

That is what you get for being a big mouth and stirring up the community. If you go on like that you’ll see, we’ll kill you - Female Participant, Valledupar

This threat is not only restricted to regions like Meta and Cesar. Some female participants in Bogotá said that the fear and dread of armed actors was an obstacle to their participation. They referred specifically to the pressure on community and social leaders in some of the boroughs were they lived. According to them, many of those who took on leadership roles were threatened and killed in their communities, while the community and the authorities kept quiet.

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They are killed because they advocate for people’s rights. - Female Participant, Bogotá

The types of intimidation suffered by female leaders constitute a serious impediment to their participation in the spaces designed as part of the Victims’ Law. One government official pointed out:

Security is one [of the obstacles], because there are threats and harassment.- Government Official, Bogotá

Another government official stated:

[Lack of ] protection [discouraged participation]. But the most delicate thing is the vision that there is of protection. In other words, the fact that the armed conflict in Colombia hasn’t ended and there is a particular view of police protection . . . We have come through some very difficult years in which the the armed conflict was denied and that was a terrible obstacle. - Government Official, Bogotá

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6. Institutional and Organizational Barriers

Institutional barriers to participation refer to, on the one hand, difficulties with public institutions that hinder the participation of both men and women and, on the other hand, the limited experience and capabilities of public servants in the institutions charged with implementing the public policy set out in the Victims’ Law.

Among the former are obstacles that arise from inaction in generating plans for the participation of women on an equal basis with men.20 Added to this are the common lack of institutional coordination, the high degree of segregation of efforts and the institutional services of the state, as well as inadequate records and monitoring systems for participation.

Among the latter obstacles, and closely related to those mentioned above, are the lack of experience and knowledge of public servants dealing with human rights and the situation of victims and the high turn-over of public servants charged with dealing with them.

This section analyzes the organizational difficulties of victims and the organizational failings of the pro-cesses of participation and restoration of rights.

Lastly, it ends with obstacles related to women’s distrust of public institutions. This lack of trust is shown in complaints about the inefficiency of the state’s actions and the identification of state agents as some of those responsible for women’s current situation.

Obstacles Arising from Barriers in Public Institutions

The country has made progress in adopting regulations and legislation to favor the participation of women; however, there are still institutional impediments limiting women’s presence in discussion and decision-making spaces:

1. Public institutions have not provided effective mechanisms that incentivize a balance between the roles women play in productive, reproductive, and community arenas that can transform the gender division of labor within the family.

2. Fewer opportunities are afforded by institutions to women to organize and participate in deci-sion-making spaces.

20 The Protocol on Effective Participation (in Article 26 “Composition of the municipal and district roundtables for participation.”) aims to ensure a certain degree of parity, at least in some of the categories where more than one seat existed (e.g., victims of forced displacement, sexual violence, or victimizing acts against life and liberty or physical integrity).

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3. Poor institutional services for political training of women contribute to difficulties in overcoming their lack of experience and knowledge of political practice.

4. The scheduling of meetings and the dynamics of public management are inconvenient due to the lack of social services that free up women from their domestic responsibilities.

The process of institutional restructuring implied in the Victims’ Law includes a set of participatory bod-ies with the aim of encouraging greater coherence between the demands and problems of victims, and the actions, plans and programs of the government for dealing with them, and for the reestablishment of the effective enjoyment of their rights. However, a persistent deficit can be seen in mechanisms and actions to aimed at overcoming institutional obstacles to women’s participation.

Furthermore, the institutional transformations introduced in the framework of the Victims’ Law have generated a set of obstacles in the institutional system, which have affected the participation of victims, particularly women. According to one government official interviewed:

From an institutional point of view, the wrong messages are being given. Including messages attemp-ting to identify the role of a particular body . . . Even within the same body I have seen confusion, because while it’s true that the government has sought a new structure, a redistribution of responsibi-lities, new bodies; it lacked a pedagogical methodology, which is now being created as they go along, dealing with the confusion until they get to a point where one can really understand what role each body is fulfilling. It is that clear. - Government Official, Valledupar

In many ways for the institutions themselves and the public servants, the period since Law 1448 of 2011 came into effect has been one of learning “for everyone; for the functionaries and the government itself ” (Interview public servant, Valledupar, September 17, 2012). According to the majority of public servants, postponing the inscriptions of the victims’ regional roundtables when the law stated that they should have been set up within the first 90 days sent mixed signals about the capacity of the state and its institutions to adapt to new circumstances. Given this, one government official asked:

So, what is the message? The message is that we continue on our learning curve; that each person makes progress, that each person takes a look at how we are going to coordinate and make sure that the current complexities and difficulties that may exist are brought to an end. - Government Official, Valledupar

Finally, there is a need to identify the failings in the records and monitoring systems on participation. On asking public servants about this, there was a noted indifference to registration, monitoring, and follow-through mechanisms. Furthermore, it was noted that there was an almost complete lack of processes to design indicators that would, among other things, allow them to:

1. Measure the effective enjoyment of women’s right to participate in centers of power and decision making.

2. Characterize the modalities of women’s participation throughout the implementation of the Victims’ Law.

3. Determine the permanence of women in the participatory spaces contemplated by the law.

4. Analyze if participation had contributed to raising the quality of the means of accessing care, assistan-ce, and restitution.


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This point is of great concern, given that a considerable amount of funds spent under the Victims’ Law has been allocated to trying to improve the availability of information. For example, the Victims Unit’s attempts to improve the Single Registry of Victims, which has been carried out at a national level, have not transformed into concrete local achievements. In fact, only in Meta did they try to set up procedures to identify the victim population both departmentally and in Villavicencio. Of note, the Governorship of Meta and the mayor’s office in Villavicencio carried out both of these efforts independently.

Participatory Framework and Weak Institutional Coordination

The current research did not look into whether obstacles arising from the participatory framework and weak institutional coordination affected women and men differently. However, this information is in-cluded here, not just because it was mentioned so often in the workshops and interviews, but also due to the difficulties these obstacles present for victims and, of course, women victims. In the opinion of inter-viewees, their experiences have shown the inadequacies of inter-institutional coordination, both nationally and regionally. Some public servants interviewed for the study believed that part of the problem lies with the fact that:

The Administrative Department for Social Prosperity (DPS) . . . has worked independently [whereas] we have coordinated with the Unit, whose remit is victims. - Government Official, Valledupar

At a regional level there have been lots of problems . . . there are good strategies, there are some very good procedures, which when they are presented are very attractive…they are coherent and could help solve many things. The problem is that when they are put into practice, this doesn’t happen. There has been a lot of disorganization, a lack of experience; this might be the reason. - Government Official, Valledupar

With the transition . . . the vast majority of the ‘at-risk population’ has been a victim of the armed conflict, and confusion has arisen because the magnitude of the change in authority has not been understood.

Nevertheless, there are varying opinions in relation to these problems. For example, a victim pointed out in relation to the changes:

I am quite happy with this change [with the institutions dealing with victims] and I am happy be-cause for the first time we can participate, which there was just no way of doing before. - Female Participant, Valledupar

One public servant in Villavicencio also highlighted that:

The obstacles [that the institutional change brought about with the Victims’ Law] arose at the be-ginning of the year [2012], as we changed over from having an inter-institutional team dealing with the displaced population. When Law 1448 came into effect all of the other victims of other acts were included and there was a need . . . for this restructuring, the institutions required more personnel or to train their staff to deal with not only displaced persons but also other victims. However, as the days go by [the obstacles] have started to be resolved. - Government Official, Villavicencio

The victims and public servants interviewed for this study also identified weak institutional coordina-tion between the bodies responsible for programs carried out within the framework of the Victims’ Law.

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It should be noted, however, that the level of institutional coordination varies according to the context, including whether it is at the municipal, departmental, or national level.

Despite this caveat, the lack of coordination often overwhelms the very institutions that were set up under Law 1448 of 2011, in terms of the lack of coordination between different state bodies. The testimonies of women participants showed how the state, even when it has the information, does not manage to share it with the different bodies and levels of government and ends up re-victimizing the victims. Therefore, the state needs to spend more time and emotional and economic resources on steps like getting reliable information on the bodies to which women can report crimes.

Such cases are more frequent than one would expect and indicate a lack of organization between the vari-ous institutions dealing with victims. One public servant in Villavicencio acknowledged that:

The DPS has various units, all of which are independent, and there is no sort of coordination between them. It would seem that communication between them is, well, nonexistent. There is the ICBF [Colombian Institute for Family Welfare] on the one hand, the Unit for the Restitution of Land, the UARIV [Unit for Comprehensive Assistance and Reparations of Victims) and the DPS on the other. - Government Official, Villavicencio

Likewise, the creation of numerous committees and spaces for participation complicates cross-sector coor-dination in developing quality work with victims. According to one government official from the mayor’s office in Villavicencio:

This mushrooming of damn committees all over the place hinders our work; they should just pass a law that says, just these committees, period! No more, no more setting up committees . . . every law that comes out creates another damn committee and this in the end hampers the application of the particular social policy. - Government Official, Villavicencio

Likewise, a distinction can be seen between programs aimed at population groups and programs for victims and women victims. This division leads to different responsibilities that are difficult to organize. Some public servants noted:

Because we are in charge of victims [not women victims], we have no specific information on women or women victims. - Government Official, Bogotá

I am aware that as a result of the Victims’ Law there is a Transitional Justice Committee at a mu-nicipal level and that there are a number of subcommittees, but I don’t deal with them. I deal with community participation of women in general, not as victims, but as women, though of course, there are victims among them. - Government Official, Bogotá

Failings in the Quality of Care Given to Women Victims

Some institutional obstacles are compounded by the lack of experience and ability of public servants at the relevant institutions, as well as low quality of care for victims. In so far as public servants are respon-sible for implementing technically designed plans and programs, examining their suitability reveals some flaws in the framework for dealing with victims and the restitution of their rights.


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The results of the current research suggest three obstacles that flow from the experience and abilities of public servants and their treatment of victims:

1. Lack of knowledge about victims’ context and their particular situation, due, in part, to a lack of ex-perience on the part of those in charge of dealing with them. Additionally, there are stereotypes about who is considered a victim of the armed conflict.

2. Poor quality of assistance to victims, which can also be explained by deficient skills-training processes for those responsible for dealing with victims.

3. Lack of guidance for victims from the public servants, which is often a result of servants’ ignorance of the law and how to access services.

Obstacles that arise from low quality of care for victims are related to inadequate recognition of women as victims of a multiplicity of rights violations. At best, they are recognized as victims of displacement or sexual violence. Added to this are women’s self-perception that they do not have rights and the persistence of socially constructed stereotypes that limit women’s role to the private sphere, as mothers and caregivers. This hinders the exercise of women’s citizenship rights and the enjoyment of their autonomy.

Ignorance of the Realities of Victims

ICTJ’s research revealed that public servants responsible for dealing with victims and restoring their rights were ignorant of victims’ situations. They are unaware of women victims’ circumstances in the context of socio-political violence and other forms of violence. At the same time they show a lack of understand-ing of how violence may compromise not only women’s physical integrity, but also bodily, affective, and sexual autonomy.

This ignorance of victims’ experiences often determines how public servants deal with victims’ demands and complaints: it even constitutes an obstacle in disseminating information that is relevant to women victims. This is revealed in the story of one woman who had lost her brother and, finally, after a long search, found him:

The prosecutor, Dr. Mantilla, seemed to me to be very arrogant, and I was in a bad way, so when I went to the morgue for the brother’s remains I was informed by Mrs. Rocio (a woman who didn’t come across very well either) to “remember him as he was and not how he ended up” . . . I mean, what type of words are these from one woman to another . . . What did they do to him, how did they leave him? “Mrs. Rocio, after that comment, I want to know what state he’s in. I don’t care if he’s in pieces, I want to see him. Look, when someone dies, you can touch them and you know they are dead, but when they disappear someone, there is not even a phone call for many years and you hope that he is alive, that he can’t be dead, you have that hope, don’t take that away from me.”- Female Participant, Valledupar

For some women participants, public servants’ lack of knowledge about their situation and the impact of rights violations on their lives led to them “be consciously and unconsciously undervalued and ill-treated.” - Government Official, Villavicencio

Many women noted that in the majority of institutions they found people who had neither been trained nor possessed the sensitivity required for this type of work. Some public servants are constrained by and focus more on bureaucratic duties rather than on learning women’s stories around victimization across various contexts.

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Providing care to victims requires training that develops public servants’ ability to read contexts. This would contribute to an increased commitment to the work and would improve their ability to listen and understand victims’ pain, whether women or men. Not being able to read or have the ability to see in the data the stories of the victims often becomes a problem that privileges the technical over human experience and pain. Due to this lack of knowledge, analyses frequently do not reflect the needs of victims.

As a result, a logic is imposed in which public servants, imbued with their technical knowledge, try to construct a public policy that they believe to be objective, while the victims from their organizational and participatory spaces have little role to play in setting the agenda.

However, perhaps one of the most significant obstacles is that behind this inability to understand the contexts and situations of the victims there is a hidden generalized tendency to underrate their contribu-tions. Then, on the basis of technical criteria, priorities in the agenda that probably do not correspond to the real needs of victims are imposed on them. As one victim put it:

Why isn’t it clear that what’s most needed is psychosocial support . . . Look what happened to me and I still haven’t got over it and nobody has helped me . . . When I started in this victims’ process I couldn’t talk to anyone about it. - Female Participant, Valledupar

To have a real chance at reversing the lack of protection of rights, public servants must go beyond decon-textualized visions and answers that reduce everything to one-off isolated acts and victimizations. This would contribute to a greater understanding and actions that are more relevant to violations of women’s rights.

Quality of Care Given to Victims

According to the current research, one of the greatest obstacles that women face in accessing mechanisms for participation in the Victims’ Law is their lack of recognition as valid rights holders. This can be seen in the failure of public institutions dealing with and advising them on their situation. Women participants pointed out that public servants do not explain procedures to them or where to go to access services. This is why some women feel ill-treated.

You come out of those offices feeling bad. They humiliate you and make you feel small. - Female Participant, Valledupar

This may be due to the high staff turnover, which prevents public servants from increasing their expe-rience and developing their abilities in dealing with victims. As has been recognized by the national government,21 constant change of personnel has become a problem. The government has invested sizeable sums of money in training public servants with the aim of including a human rights focus for women in the protocols on assistance. This money is at risk of being wasted because staff spend very little time work-ing with these bodies and are quickly transferred to other entities, often following a bureaucratic logic.

In any case, it must be pointed out that, according to some of those interviewed, corrective measures are now being implemented. A director at the Assistance and Orientation Unit for IDPs (UAO) stated that: 22

21 SNARIV, Informe de avance en el cumplimiento de los autos de seguimiento a la Sentencia T-025 de 2004, 75.22 These units became “Points for Tending to Victims” under the model for dealing with victims. However, the public servant interviewed was the director of the UAO at the time the fieldwork was carried out.


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Personnel training is extremely important because working with victims is very special; the assistance given is not the same (and I give as an example those officials who are under my direction). It is not the same assistance that is given at a service point for Movistar as that given to victims, because they bring with them a problem, a series of situations that have affected their wellbeing, their inner self, their capacity to be part of society without being judged, without being isolated . . . they already had to leave everything behind. - Government Official, Villavicencio

Despite this, it is quite common for victims to report ill-treatment and humiliation at the hands of those charged with dealing with them in public institutions. Some of the workshop participants reported that:

Nobody helps you there, because they look at you as poor and dirty. They sent my mother to Santander but there’s nobody there to look after her and we don’t have the money to go get her. The government has no consideration for the victims, we don’t exist, we are less than animals to them. - Indigenous Female Participant, Valledupar

It’s terrible. The people they appointed to deal with us lack human warmth, they haven’t even done a course on dealing with people and that is seriously wrong and terrible . . . The assistance we, victims, receive is severe . . . Do you know what they should do? How can we tell them that we are annoyed at the assistance they give us? And that way we could improve it. - Female Participant, Valledupar

Further, assistance from some public servants seems to be halfhearted, as they do not recognize the multi-plicity of rights violations against women, of social and individual concepts that recreate and reproduce a vision of women solely in a domestic setting, lacking in autonomy, where they are only mothers, wives, or sisters of male victims. This vision implies a view where victimhood is contingent on women playing these roles. One woman told us of her experience with a public servant:

He said that I didn’t look displaced. Another one said, “We’ve been told everyone comes here saying they’re displaced, how are you supposed to know who’s telling the truth?” - Female Participant, Bogotá

One public servant reported that the first thing you have to do before dealing with victims was:

Characterize the group well and carry out a good census. It happens, or can happen a lot, as some-times occurs regarding housing, that people who are not really victims or displaced people turn up. - Public Servant, Bogotá

Various public servants (particularly those who have only recently taken up their posts) who spoke with ICTJ noticed the need to insist on improving the treatment and protocols assistance for victims. One servant who was interviewed as part of the research commented that:

As for bureaucratic procedures that users are subjected to in order to fulfill some administrative task in the municipal bodies, I would think that we need greater due care and political will not to place more impediments in the path of the community and not delay giving them what they applied for . . . in the sense that if the at-risk population needs something and granting it is do-able, then it would be a good idea for the different bodies not to delay granting it. - Government Official, Villavicencio

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Another high-ranking government official said the same, but expanded on the impact of these attitudes:

I can’t deny that there’s a need, not just for victims but also for ordinary people that we, as officials, have a sense of human warmth, as we are public servants and that is what we are here for. When a public servant understands that every person that comes in is a client and it is to that client that he or she owes, that would change things regardless of whether you are a victim or not. So, yes, we need to be a little bit more aware. - High-ranking Government Official, Villavicencio

Weak Advising Processes

A third obstacle relates to deficiencies in advising victims. Women victims who participated in this study painted a very unflattering picture. While this obstacle seems similar to previously mentioned barriers, which dealt with the lack of knowledge that many women have of their rights and the laws that protect them, it is important to distinguish between the two. Previously cited barriers are the result of a lack of knowledge that comes out of a patriarchal social order that pressures women—both explicitly and implic-itly—to demean the learning and participatory process in favor of playing their traditional roles in the private sphere. On the other hand, this obstacle explicitly relates to the state’s responsibility, enshrined in the Victims’ Law, to guarantee victims complete access to all necessary information in order to effectively exercise their rights to participate.

There are two victims’ positions regarding institutional political will to socialize Law 1448 of 2011. Some reported that the bodies charged with disseminating information on the law fail to do so, or only partially do so, which is why women victims were unaware of the processes and the mechanisms. Others maintained that the outreach and training processes were carried out, but that the methodologies used are inappropriate for reaching communities. Because of this, victims in this study reported that either they did not take part in the training sessions or when they did attend they fell asleep or did not pay attention.

Similarly, women participants agreed that the lack of government information on the Victims’ Law is an obstacle that substantially affects levels of participation. Consequently, it is only recently that the majority of women participants began to provide statements and access services. Again, the present research did not examine whether this problem is greater or different for women compared to men.

In response to these critiques from women, some public servants countered:

Our role is to manage, facilitate, and advise, but, at the end of the day, [victims] are the ones who have to make a decision. This is, more or less, how we have handled it. But prior to this we did in-form and advise them a little on the law. We told them about the different components, such as: the setting up of a psychosocial care program, as provided in the law; an administrative compensation program as provided in the law; and the issue of land restitution and symbolic reparations. - Government Official, Valledupar

For many women the absence of information to guide their actions—in the midst of complex situa-tions—constituted a hindrance to their participation and exercise of their rights. One victims reported:

Two people that we elected [as representatives on the Transitory Roundtables for the Participation of Victims] do not even know what the role of the Transitional Justice Committee is. We told them [the institutions charged with this] that we needed some training for them . . . As far as I can see the law is not grounded in the needs of the people. - Female Participant, Valledupar


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Likewise, another woman complained about the lack of guidance from public servants:

Nobody tells you what to do, nobody says, “We’re going to accompany you, we are going to go with you,” or “We’re going to help you make your claim, don’t go there.” - Female Participant, Valledupar

On this point, the biggest request made by women victims —who have the greatest difficulties in getting institutional guidance—in this study is that they be listened to and that victims’ needs be acknowledged. It is clear that in many cases, the public officials themselves have become an additional barrier for women.

Difficulties in Organizing and Organizational Weaknesses

The difficulties women face in organizing themselves and strengthening their organizations politically relate to the recent history of political participation. Women only gained the right to vote and be elected in Colombia in 1957. This historical deficit in participation, representation, and organization has ongoing implications for their compliance with Law 1448’s requirement that victims be organized in order to take part in the Roundtables for the Participation of Victims.

There are difficulties in victims’ organizations (whether mixed or women only) in formulating a common discourse that allows victims, despite their differences, to see themselves as allies with a common aim. The consequent individualistic dynamic in participation prevents progress with respect to achieving their col-lective goals. It also undermines the legitimacy of representative participation and any collective trust that necessarily precedes all attempts at organizing. Some women reported:

If you are working well in defending us, the victims, you shouldn’t have anything to fear from me coming along. But if they are already cagey about it, then there’s something wrong.- Female Participant, Valledupar

Another failing is that we were divided. They divided the victims. Here we have the displaced and over there the other victims. Those of us who are victims of a murder are not recognized as displaced persons . . . there is no equitable process for victims. - Woman Participant, Valledupar

In addition to the divisions among victims, women face obstacles to participating in mixed organizations due to stereotypical views that then relegate to them a subordinate status, even despite their numbers. Women participants attributed problems they faced in the mixed organizations to authoritarian behavior of male leaders that also tends toward favoritism, which exemplifies the stigmatization they experience. The need for women’s groups arises from this.

Notwithstanding the acknowledged need for even more women’s groups in which women can play a leadership role and make proposals, there are still difficulties in working collectively towards a common aim. Women participants felt that a lack of communication, commitment, and organizational resolve continued to impede the consolidation and persistence of women’s groups. Moreover, a lack of knowledge of their rights and laws that protect them prevents women from having an impact in their organizations, be they mixed or women-only organizations.

We are forever undermining the others with gossip and criticisms of the leaders or women who play a leadership role.- Female Participant, Valledupar

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If we stand up and say things that are not true and we fight with the government, that is as far as our influence will go. Instead of taking advantage of the spaces, [the groups] spend their time on infight-ing and we make no progress . . . For example, if there’s a human rights event, they come out saying that the displaced don’t have this or that and they start arguing instead of taking advantage of the participatory spaces. - Female Participant, Valledupar

Women’s Distrust of Public Institutions

One of the greatest obstacles to women’s participation is their distrust of public institutions. There are two aspects to this, showing two sides of the complex development of the conflict and state actions.

The first complaint of women victims is about the ineffectiveness, weakness, and inefficiency of the state’s care. They claim that the state has no real interest or political will to deal with their problems.

The government doesn’t help victims, but rather it makes us go back and forth to tire us out so that we stop speaking out. - Female Participant, Valledupar

In a similar vein, another participant said:

You go to get some humanitarian aid and they always tell you that you have to wait, that Bogotá hasn’t sent anything. - Female Participant, Villavicencio

Others talk of reports they made about the enforced disappearance of their children and the negligent attitude of the institutions towards their situation.

The second common complaint from women has to do with identifying the state as responsible for their situation and the complicity of public servants in the violation of their rights. It is significant that in their stories, interventions, and analyses women blame public bodies for their situation. Many note the relationship, in their areas, between the heads of police and the paramilitaries and maintain that security forces fail to act on their knowledge about imminent attacks or armed checkpoints.

Some female participants and interviewees contend that in their towns, the mayor and ombudsperson “are useless” because they are either in favor of criminal groups or they want to protect their lives and those of their families. This is why participants believe nearly all cases remain unpunished. Some women said that they did not report crimes committed against them out of fear and also because they thought that those channels were useless. Other women believed that the institutions did not carry out investigations or inform the women how the case was going.

We were aware that you couldn’t . . . you just couldn’t go to the army, or the police or any of the institutions, because in Cesar, and, indeed, the whole country, it was one of the institutions most heavily infiltrated by the self-defense groups . . . The problem is going there and reporting to the army or the police because all that information is passed on to 39 [a paramilitary leader]. This 39 had been an army officer; I think he used to be a major. He had a lot of influence . . . You couldn’t trust the prosecutor’s office; we couldn’t trust the governor or the departmental government. From the departmental government on down, not the mayors, nobody, not any of the institutions: the


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INCODER (Colombian Institute for Rural Development), ICBF, and the hospital. They had all been infiltrated by the self-defense groups in Cesar, you couldn’t trust any of them.- Female Participant, Valledupar

There is a contradiction for many victims because those who were accomplices of the victimizers are the now in charge of implementing the Victims’ Law. One woman pointed out that many government of-ficials are linked to the paramilitaries:

They are the same officials dealing with the victim issue, and this generates tremendous distrust. To have to see the army or police, that also causes great fear . . . because you just don’t know . . . because back then you couldn’t say anything to a police officer because 38 would know about it shortly after-wards and then immediately 39 would know about it. - Female Participant, Valledupar

These testimonies suggest that victims distrust institutions because of the links between state agents and armed actors in the conflict. Reducing this distrust requires a change in the practices of those responsible for assistance and reparations in the framework of Law 1448 of 2011.

State agents need to rebuild trust by demonstrating their capacity to see, feel, and understand the situa-tion of women victims and transcend any theoretical discourse. They must reject all violence, especially violence against the person, because trust is built and rebuilt on the basis of mutual respect and care, recognition, and commitment. To construct and reconstruct trust following on the experiences of violence and the abuse of power is both possible and necessary, in order to implement not just participatory mechanisms but also reparations that have transformative potential for women victims.

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7. Conclusions

These conclusions are based on the research conducted in reference to the participation of women in mechanisms contemplated in the Victims’ Law. It is worth noting that the realities women face in the context of the armed conflict, as narrated by interviewees at workshops in three cities (Valledupar, Vil-lavicencio, and Bogotá), reflect a continuum of violence against them. This continuum encompasses their subordination and oppression, threats and harassment by armed actors, and the lack of economic resources to live a dignified life.

It is important to clarify that while the research did not look at how institutional obstacles to participa-tion affected male and female victims differently, the findings indicate such obstacles impact women to a greater degree. This is partly due to the fact that women are not recognized as active agents of politi-cal agreements. Their oppression and subordination is not acknowledged, and, therefore, democracy is not reconfigured in order to effectively facilitate the full enjoyment of women’s rights. It is not enough to include a strict gender parity in spaces for participation, but, rather, there is a fundamental need for measures that change prejudices, judgments, and social imagery, at an individual level (between men and women), at the institutional level, and in the wider society.

The most significant conclusions are:

Women’s participation was reduced to a formality.

• Women do not have quality information on the participatory mechanisms contemplated in the current regulations that protect their rights.

• Participation is seen by the majority of women and public servants as: 1) a necessary requirement, but one that does not produce any benefits as participating changes nothing; 2) a legal formality that must be done in order to gain access to certain services and that does not transcend the procedures and forms themselves; and 3) a restricted short-term process that has no chance of transforming the victims’ situation. These perceptions arise because many participatory processes had failed to substan-tially change the lives of the women involved.

• Women victims have difficulties organizing and overcoming the fragmentation that the distinctions made between victims produces, the differences in aims and objectives of their organizations, and the prevailing individualistic view of participation.


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Socio-economic conditions of women victims present obstacles.

• Although it is not necessarily a decisive fact in all cases that a lack of material resources inevitably in-hibits women’s participation, there is certainly a correlation between having certain material resources and having both the means and capacity to participate in collective processes.

• The situation of the women victims who participated in the workshops and were interviewed is highly unsatisfactory, in terms of: housing, public services, health, education, nutrition, social services for the care of their underage children, and opportunities in the labor market.

Armed conflict and violence against women is the most significant obstacle.

• The persistence of the armed conflict and presence of armed actors in the regions and their conse-quences for the family, social environment, and community is one of the most significant obstacles to women’s participation.

• Threats, intimidation, harassment, persecution, forced displacement, murder, and sexual violence continue against female leaders and the inhabitants of the municipalities selected for this research.

• Plans and protective mechanisms awarded by the state to such women are insufficient; they do not guarantee their security or that of their families.

Women victims tend to distrust public institutions.

• There is a lack of political will and a weak and sometimes ineffective response by the state in at-tending women victims and creating streamlined mechanisms that consider their status as victims produces a distrust of public institutions.

• Women victims view the state as partly responsible for their disadvantageous and unjust situation and see some public figures as accomplices of the armed actors with a presence in the municipalities selected for this research.

• According to the women victims, some public servants show a lack of interest in carrying out prompt, thorough investigations of those who violate the rights of women.

Assistance and reparations programs lack differentiated institutional services.

• There is a lack of knowledge of the sociopolitical environment of women victims, the rights that protect them, the already-existing participatory mechanisms, and the duties of public servants to implement the Victims’ Law. This affects the cultural and social views of those in charge of dealing with women and results in a restricted view of victims’ rights or the normalization of acts that violate their rights.

• The participation of women is affected by the failure to proactively deal with their pain and grief resulting from violent acts committed against them.

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• Institutions charged with creating participatory spaces and mechanisms contemplated in the Victims’ Law do not take into account practical and structural obstacles to women’s participation.

• Women need to able to count on the availability of social services that allow them to combine their roles as heads-of-household and leaders. This would lead to actions that show greater commitment and reflect women’s needs and would help in complying with public policy on dealing with victims.

• Records and monitoring systems on participation continue to be inadequate. This research shows the apathy of public servants towards records, monitoring, and follow through on mechanisms and highlights the almost complete lack of processes to define indicators. This aspect is of even greater concern given the considerable resources allocated through the Victims’ Law to try to improve the availability of information.

Women victims lack knowledge of their rights.

• The construction of the idea of what is feminine and the subjectivity of women, in which

women are basically limited to a domestic role, curtails their political status and the recog-

nition of their rights. This becomes a self-imposed barrier to participation.

• The weak processes for citizen training accessible to women and the lack of mass outreach

strategies about their rights are, for some women, important barriers to their participation.

• There is a further lack of knowledge on the part of women victims of the laws and regula-

tions and policies that protect them.

The rights of women victims by public servants are not recognized.

�� -

ed, due to the prejudices and judgments that deny women their status as full citizens with

rights.

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8. Recommendations

The following recommendations suggest how obstacles that impede women’s participation in mechanisms established under the Victims’ Law could be overcome.

Mechanisms of Participation

• To the Victims Unit: Facilitate preparatory meetings prior to the plenary of the roundtable and the thematic groups of the national, departmental, and municipal roundtables for the participation of women victims’ representatives.

• To the Sub-directorate for Participation and the Victims’ Unit Gender Group: Through discus-sion and dialogue with women victims’ organizations and the women’s groups that accompany them, design and implement a program to incentivize women’s participation. The program must take into account regional and ethnic differences, the specific dynamics of the regions in relation to exercising the right to participation, and the relationship and interactions between victims and public institu-tions.

• To the Technical Secretary of the Roundtables: Record and take special note of proposals presented at the roundtables and plenary sessions. The methodologies and the tools designed by the Victims Unit for this purpose should include the means to highlight proposals presented by women victims so that their proposals are not overlooked or ignored.

Response to the Public Institutions

• To the Victims Unit: Construct a baseline of the socioeconomic conditions of women victims so that progress and impact of reparations can be measured. To that end, improve, adjust, and update the registry and information systems in terms of: data according to age and ethnic group and socioecono-mic and cultural indicators on the situation of women.

• Design strategies to minimize the obstacles to women’s active participation in the measures esta-blished by the Victims’ Law that arise from the unfavorable socioeconomic conditions of women victims.23

23 Obstacles include: transport costs, lack of childcare facilities, the tendency of men to receive greater attention in public spaces, literacy difficulties, the power relations between men and women, the gender-based division of labor in the home, and the low levels of formal education among women victims.

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• Design and implement a training program for state agents on the rights of women with a differen-tiated focus for the purpose of incorporating these concepts into the advice and assistance given to women victims. There should be an emphasis on promoting participatory mechanisms stipulated in the law, so public servants can play a leading role in incentivizing the informed participation of women victims. Such a program should include raising awareness around the special circumstances of women victims, particularly with regard to sexual violence and the specific needs that they may have, with the aim of improving the care they receive. This program could be included as a module in ongoing training programs aimed at reparations coordinators, the public servants attached to the Victims Unit, the Public Defender’s Office, and the municipal ombudspersons, among others.

• To the Victims’ Unit Gender Group: Develop participatory regional assessments on the dynamics, organizational culture, and participation of women, with the aim of designing differentiated strategies that respond to the realities of women in each region.

Security Situation for the Participation of Women Victims

• To the Victims’ Unit (as the coordinating body of the National System for Comprehensive Assistan-ce and Reparations of Victims), the Ministry of the Interior (in charge of the National Protection Program) and the Regional Transitional Justice Committees (in charge at a municipal and depart-mental level):

- Design and implement effective measures for the individual and collective protection of women victims who have been threatened. This should include advice, shelter, psychosocial support, and rehabilitation, as necessary. Establish special protective measures for women victims of state crimes that guarantee their security as victims and their rights, as women, to truth, justice, and reparations.

- Conduct ongoing monitoring of protection policies for women victims, particularly those women who, due to their role as leaders of organizational processes, have a higher public profile and con-sequently are at greater risk of receiving threats against their lives, their sexual integrity, and their autonomy.

- Strengthen the state response to cases of threats or other risks for women victims.

- Ensure that the protective measures for women victims take into account their context, customs, and beliefs, and the level of risk. It is essential these measures do not contribute to their re-victimization.

To the Municipal and Departmental Transitional Justice Committees: Ensure that prevention and protection plans contain a special chapter on protective and preventative measures for female leaders, human rights defenders, and women victims who are members of the Roundtables for the Participation of Victims.

To the Public Defender’s Office and the Victims Unit: Design and implement a widespread campaign aimed at women victims about their rights and the content of the Victims’ Law. Special emphasis should be placed on those parts of the law that specifically refer to a differentiated focus and participatory mecha-nisms. In order to reach organized women victims, it is advisable to form alliances with women victims’ organizations and mixed organizations. In order to reach victims not affiliated with existing organizations, it is recommended that the municipal ombudspersons’ offices are strengthened in order for them to spread the information on the rights of victims and the content of the Victims’ Law.


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Appendix: Methodological Data

Each workshop with women victims of the armed conflict lasted three days. Apart from collecting infor-mation and data firsthand from women belonging to victims’ organizations and women who had yet to be organized, the workshops also included elements of training for women on aspects of the Victims’ Law, using methodology from Casa de la Mujer. The following table contains information on the workshops.

Place Workshops Women

Valledupar (Cesar)Group 1 20

Group 2 11

Villavicencio (Meta)Group 1 20

Group 2 22

Bogotá, D.C.Group 1 23

Group 2 35

TOTAL 131

Interviews were carried out with authorities, public servants, and victims. These interviews allowed us to identify the main obstacles to women’s participation in the law itself and in its implementation as well as in aspects such as tending to the population addressed by the law. The number of municipal and depart-mental interviews can be found in the following table.

PlaceInterviews

TotalMunicipal Departmental

Valledupar (Cesar) 1 5 6

Villavicencio (Meta) 5 2 7

Bogotá, D.C. 4 - 4

TOTAL 10 7 17

The layout of the report “We Want to be Heard: Obstacles to Women Taking Part in Participatory Mechanisms for Dealing with Victims of the Internal Armed Conflict” was concluded in October 2016

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