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COLOMBIA:
Sexual Violence as Weapon of War
By Helda Martínez
BOGOTA (IPS) - Sexual violence is used
as a weapon of war in Colombia by all
parties in the country’s longstanding armed
conflict, and its main victims are women and
girls, states a report recently released by
Intermón Oxfam, backing up claims made
repeatedly by national and international
human rights groups.
At the launch of the report, released
simultaneously in Bogota and Madrid, Paula
San Pedro of Intermón Oxfam – the Spanish
branch of the relief and development
organisation Oxfam International - stressed
that all of the armed groups in Colombia,
including government security forces,
far-right paramilitary forces and leftist
guerrilla rebels, use sexual violence as a
weapon of war, "to the extent that it has
become an integral part of the conflict."
The report, "Sexual Violence in Colombia: A
Weapon of War", has served to shine light on
an issue that has been repeatedly raised
over the past two decades by women’s, human
rights, Afro-Colombian and peasant farmers'
organisations, as well as some female
legislators, yet has been largely ignored by
both the government and the general public.
In Colombia, the report's launch coincided
with a World Peace Summit held in Bogota in
early October, where personal testimonials
and audiovisual presentations highlighted
the powerlessness felt by women and other
particularly vulnerable sectors of the
civilian population throughout more than
four decades of civil war.
Over four million people have been forcibly
displaced by the ongoing conflict since
1995, according to figures from a number of
non-governmental organisations, including
the Consultancy on Human Rights and
Displacement (CODHES). This figure
represents roughly 10 percent of the
country’s total population of 42 million.
The majority of the displaced are peasant
farmers and black or indigenous Colombians
forced off their land, often after
witnessing the killing of family members or
rape of women from their communities.
This South American country has been in the
grip of civil war since 1964, when the
leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia (FARC) and the much smaller
National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrillas
rose up in arms. The paramilitary groups
that emerged in the 1980s to combat the
leftist insurgents alongside the government
forces remain active despite the reported
demobilisation of tens of thousands of their
numbers between 2002 and 2006.
Permanent scars
Intermón Oxfam and other humanitarian groups
maintain that 60 percent of the total number
of displaced Colombians are women, and that
two of every 10 of them have fled their
homes to escape sexual violence.
Unfortunately, there are no official figures
to reflect this situation, because in many
cases, women do not report being raped "out
of fear or shame," explained Alexandra
Quintero, the research coordinator at
Sisma-Mujer, an NGO which produces annual
reports on violence against women in
different spheres.
Some victims of sexual violence suffer from
temporary or permanent mental illness, as
reported by participants at the World Peace
Summit. "Permanent scars" was the term used
by a 53-year-old Afro-Colombian woman from
the northwestern province of Chocó, who
called herself María (not her real name).
María told IPS that before the armed
conflict spread into Chocó, "we lived
peacefully on the banks of the Atrato River.
That was up until 1988, more or less, when
the cruelest part of the war began. Every
time we heard a boat motor we would freeze."
The population of the province of Chocó, on
the Pacific coast, is mainly black. The
province also has the highest poverty rates
in the country, and almost all
transportation is by boat over the many
rivers and streams that run through it.
"They dragged people out of their beds in
the middle of the night. They killed the men
and raped the women," recalled María, with a
mix of anger and resignation.
María knows a woman who was gang-raped by a
group of guerrilla fighters, but she was
also a witness to the cruelty of the
paramilitary forces and the atrocities
committed by government soldiers against
women in the region.
"It’s a trauma that you never recover from,
no matter how much they talk about
reparations, because it’s something a woman
feels in the flesh," she said. Whether the
victim is a young girl or a grown woman,
"when she doesn’t want something done to her
body, it shouldn’t happen," she stressed.
This is what led María to join a group of
women from Chocó that organises protests,
sit-ins and other actions to raise awareness
about the problem. "We need to participate
more actively and make ourselves visible,
because we have been badly beaten down," she
said.
Machista culture trumps modern laws
The persistent struggle waged by women
eventually had an impact in the judicial and
legislative arenas, leading to reforms of
existing laws and the adoption of new ones.
Their achievements include the recognition
of women as victims of sexual violence and
of their right to compensation.
Nevertheless, "these legislative advances do
not appear to have had any effect in actual
practice," Quintero told IPS.
This is because the modernisation of the
country’s laws has done nothing to change
the underlying culture or to curb acts of
aggression against women "in a particularly
machista and patriarchal society," said San
Pedro, the coordinator of the Intermón Oxfam
report, at its launch in Madrid.
The report estimates that "between 60 and 70
percent of Colombian women have suffered
some form of sexual, physical, emotional or
political violence" - statistics that show
that violence against women is a phenomenon
that goes beyond the problem of the armed
conflict.
Moreover, it is a phenomenon that has
actually worsened instead of diminishing in
recent years. Sources consulted by IPS
concurred that the "democratic security
policy" implemented by the right-wing
government of President Álvaro Uribe has
resulted in a rise in violence against
women.
"This policy has signified greater
insecurity for women, because the so-called
demobilisation of the paramilitary groups,
who continue to control many regions of the
country, has particularly affected women and
girls," María Eugenia Ramírez of the
Bogota-based Latin American Institute for
Alternative Rights told IPS.
This insecurity is reflected in "sexual
violence, genital mutilation, harassment and
forced recruitment. Conclusion: the armed
conflict has exacerbated the violence that
women have historically faced," said Ramírez.
Quintero said this conclusion is backed up
by the findings of a report coordinated by
her organisation, Sisma-Mujer, which will be
released in November by the National Network
of Women.
The upcoming report reveals that the number
of human rights violations in general, and
those committed by members of government
security forces in particular, has tripled
since 2006.
The sources consulted for the report include
the non-governmental Colombian Commission of
Jurists (CCJ) and the forensic Legal
Medicine Institute, noted Quintero, who
stressed that the report addresses the
violation of human rights of the population
in general.
The report confirms that there has been no
improvement in terms of the vulnerability of
the population in general or of women and
girls specifically as compared to previous
studies.
The 2007 edition of the report quoted an
alarming figure provided by the CCJ:
"Between January 2002 and June 2006, an
average of one woman a day died a violent
death in Colombia."
The National Trade Union School contributed
some detailed statistics in 2005: "Women
trade unionists suffered 15 acts of femicide,
102 death threats, 10 arbitrary detentions,
15 acts of harassment and persecution for
their union activity, two attempted murders,
seven forced displacements and one
kidnapping."
Meanwhile, the Constitutional Court reported
early this year, based on figures supplied
by women's organisations, that of the 518
victims of constitutional violations
registered since 1993, 183 were victims of
sexual assault.
Of the total number of cases, 58 percent
were attributed to paramilitary forces, 23
percent to government security forces, eight
percent to insurgent groups, and the
remainder to unknown perpetrators.
While there may be variations among the
different reports compiled, they all concur
in highlighting an aggravating factor with
regard to violence against women: impunity.
The report to be released by Sisma-Mujer in
November maintains that the perpetrators of
this violence go unpunished in an astounding
97 percent of cases, according to Quintero.
"There is not a single region in the country
where women can feel safe," said San Pedro,
before going on to stress that
"Afro-Colombian and indigenous women are the
most vulnerable to sexual violence, given
the triple discrimination they suffer
because of their gender, ethnicity and
poverty." |
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