Justice and Peace Law
The newly established JPL Tribunal has the opportunity to implement international legal norms and set legal precedents on gender and women's rights in the current demobilization movement. Last year, in response to the JPL, the Constitutional Court issued a ruling calling for implementation of the JPL in a manner that complies with international norms on the rights of victims. This decision opened the door for women to demand that gender considerations inform the transitional justice mechanism, giving victims of gender-based violence a place in the process and an even stronger claim for reparations. The Constitutional Court's recent jurisprudence reflects the respect for the legal value of international human rights in Colombia; and their usage of international legal norms to solve constitutional challenges in other areas is a landmark opportunity for women to demand that gender considerations inform the transitional justice mechanism.
Women's Peacebuilding Activities
Women have been excluded from every round of official negotiations between the government and the rebel groups, but have engaged in peace building efforts in civil society and at the grassroots level despite intimidation, threats and violence by rebels and paramilitaries.
For example, on 25 June 2000, Colombian women involved in the negotiations between the Pastrana government and the FARC and women representatives from civil society organized the Women's Public Forum in the Demilitarized zone. The purpose of the Forum was to give voice to women's issues and allow women's concerns a vehicle towards influencing the official negotiations. Over 600 women from official negotiators to civil society and private sector organizations to Indigenous groups participated in the Forum organized around six themes. Papers and meeting minutes were presented to government, FARC and other negotiators to encourage them to place greater attention on gender perspectives and women's issues.
In August 2001, two thousand Colombian women, along side one-hundred representatives from international NGOs, began peace caravans in seven departments and converged in Barrancabermeja, a city that has been under paramilitary siege. The march was intended to spread a message of non-violence throughout the seven departments and to encourage Colombians to refuse to allow a climate of fear to take over their country.
On July 25, 2002, women's groups from the five major women's networks converged for the National Mobilization of Women Against the War, attracting a great deal of visibility for the women's movement as a political force. One month prior, representatives from over three hundred women's organizations convened with other women's leaders from the region to plan for the mobilization with support from UNIFEM's Andean Region Office.
From 2004 to 2005, Colombia's two main national women's networks - Iniciativa de mujeres por la paz and Red Nacional de Mujeres undertook an advocacy campaign with support from UNIFEM to ensure that new Justice and Peace legislation would adequately reflect and protect women's rights and enshrine justice for sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV). The women's networks drafted a series of recommendations for incorporation in the draft law. Three of the women's recommendations were approved by Parliament in April, in articles 39, 42 and 52, weeks before the law was expected to be finalized. A second round of recommendations was presented in an open letter from the women's networks to Parliament on 12 May 2005. Civil society also took up the women's call for the law to better address SGBV among its own recommendations to legislators.