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WOMEN:
12 Colombian
Nobel Peace Nominees All Too
Familiar with War
Constanza Vieira
BOGOTA, (IPS) - "I'm 50 years
old, I was born into war and I
have lived in war all my life,"
said labour and women's rights
activist Patricia Buriticá, a
pioneer in incorporating a
gender perspective in Colombia's
trade union movement. She is one
of 12 Colombian women nominated
for this year's Nobel Peace
Prize.
The women nominated in this
civil war-torn country include
members of indigenous and
Afro-Colombian communities,
urban and rural as well as young
and elderly activists,
campesinas and labourers,
academics, feminists, church
workers, public officials, and
social and political leaders.
The Colombian peace activists
and 987 women from a total of
150 countries were collectively
nominated Wednesday for the
Nobel Peace Prize to be awarded
on Oct. 4 in Oslo.
The campaign, "1000 Women for
the Nobel Peace Prize 2005", was
launched in 2003 on the
initiative of Ruth-Gaby
Vermot-Mangold, a member of the
Swiss Parliament and the Council
of Europe, with the support of
Swisspeace (the Swiss Peace
Foundation).
Nominee number 1,000 has no
name, age or nationality, but
represents the millions of women
around the world from all walks
of life who work for peace and
human dignity in their daily
lives.
The 1000th nominee "is the
symbol of the woman living along
the riverbanks, the woman in
prison, the rape victim, the
head of family, the worker, the
indigenous woman, the campesina,
the one who could not show up
here," said Nubia Castañeda, one
of the 12 nominees, in a press
conference Wednesday in Bogotá.
Castañeda defends the rights of
Afro-Colombian women in Chocó, a
resource-rich jungle region
disputed by different armed
factions along the Panamanian
border, where she works with
women displaced by the
four-decade civil war.
She is also a regional
coordinator of the Women's Peace
Route and a member of the
international network Catholics
for the Right to Decide.
The catalyst for the 1000 Women
initiative was the fact that the
Nobel Peace Prize has only gone
to 12 women since it was first
awarded in 1901, while millions
of women work for peace around
the world.
The 12 women laureates were
Wangari Maathai from Kenya,
Shirin Ebadi from Iran, Jody
Williams, Emily Greene Balch and
Jane Addams from the United
States, Rigoberta Menchú from
Guatemala, Aung San Suu Kyi from
Burma, Mother Teresa, an
Albanian missionary in India,
Alva Myrdal from Sweden, Betty
Williams and Mairead Corrigan
from Northern Ireland, and
Bertha Sophie Felicita von
Suttner from Austria.
The 1000 nominees include 144
women from 19 Latin American
countries.
The 10 Colombian jury members
selected mainly women who are
well-known in their regions,
communities and fields, although
they are not necessarily
high-profile figures in this
country where leftist guerrillas
are fighting the armed forces
and extreme right-wing
paramilitary militias.
The nominees continue working
for a political solution to the
social and armed conflict and
advocate the presence of women
and women's organisations in
potential peace negotiations,
said the jury, made up of
professionals, government
employees and social leaders.
Campesina (peasant farmer) María
Eugenia Zabala is a war widow
who was forced to flee her home,
like three million other
Colombians. When she was
displaced by the violence, she
lost everything she owned, and
went into debt to acquire a home
for herself and her children.
She works on empowering
displaced women, most of whom
are the heads of their
households like herself. "Peace
is equality," said Zabala, who
works for peace in the heart of
the territory under paramilitary
control, in the northwestern
province of Córdoba.
Virgelina Chara, an
Afro-Colombian community leader
from the southwestern province
of Valle del Cauca, is also a
victim of forced displacement.
The singer-songwriter now lives
in Bogotá, where she helps women
boost their incomes and trains
them in techniques of political
resistance to the war.
Beatriz Elena Rodríguez, a
former sex worker, now provides
support to prostitutes in
Florencia, in the southern
province of Caquetá, where the
government is carrying out a
U.S.-financed military offensive
against the insurgents. Her
experiences have led her to
conclude that "women's bodies
are another battlefield in the
war."
In her work, Rodríguez helps
young men and women find
alternative livelihoods, to keep
them from feeling the need to
join any of the armed factions
in order to survive.
Hilda Liria Domicó, a member of
the Emberá Katío indigenous
group in the rich agricultural
lands of the northwestern region
of Urabá, is a cultural educator
in her community, which is
threatened by the armed
conflict.
Nasa Indian María Beatriz
Aniceto lives in the Avirama
indigenous reserve in the
southeastern province of Cauca,
where she was the head of the
native governing council for two
terms in a row, making progress
towards achieving recognition of
the right of indigenous people
to govern themselves, as
stipulated in the constitution.
She is also a member of the
Women's Peace Route.
Yolanda Becerra heads up the
Popular Women's Organisation (OFP)
in the oil-refining river port
of Barrancabermeja in central
Colombia, which has been under
paramilitary control since
bloody massacres were committed
there in the late 1990s.
The OFP emerged 32 years ago,
organising community soup
kitchens, and later got involved
in the defence of "human rights
as a whole," said Becerra.
OFP activists are famous for
standing up to armed
paramilitary fighters in the
streets of Barrancabermeja. Many
of them have been brutally
tortured and killed, and many
others face death threats.
At the age of 74, María Tila
Uribe is the oldest of the
Colombian nominees. According to
the members of the jury, she is
a "tenacious and faithful
fighter for justice and peace"
who now works with elderly
women.
Rafaela Vos, a sociologist,
political scientist and feminist
historian, has dedicated her
knowledge to the defence of
human rights. "I am an academic,
but I am not shut up in an ivory
tower," says the activist, who
describes herself as part of
"that generation that has
brought about changes without
firing a single shot."
Nationally and internationally
renowned activist Ana Teresa
Bernal has fought for peace
since she was a teenager. Since
1994 she has been the
spokeswoman for the Peace
Initiatives Network.
Bernal campaigned for the
Citizen's Mandate for Peace,
Life and Liberty, in which 10
million Colombians voted in late
1997 for an end to the violence.
The Mandate succeeded in making
peace the central focus of the
1998 presidential campaign, and
when President Andrés Pastrana
took office in August 1998, he
wore the green ribbon that
symbolised the movement.
One of the 12 nominees was
absent at Wednesday's news
briefing: Luz Perly Córdoba, an
indigenous political activist
from the oil-producing, war-torn
region of Arauca on the border
with Venezuela.
The president of the Arauca
Campesina Association, Córdoba
spent 14 months in prison,
charged with "rebellion". After
she was released in April, she
was once again targeted by death
threats and went into exile.
Córdoba is fighting the forced
displacement of local rural
communities by big economic
interests aiming to make way for
mega-projects.
The jury lamented the late
presentation of the name of
former senator and presidential
candidate Ingrid Betancourt, who
has been held hostage for 40
months by the main rebel group,
the Revolutionary Armed Forces
of Colombia (FARC), which wants
to swap her for imprisoned
insurgents.
"Although the nomination form
arrived after a decision had
already been reached, her
political work and her efforts
to find routes towards peace in
Colombia deserve praise," said
the jury members.
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