The Experience of Women
Women and girls were affected in specific ways by the conflict. Whilst 90% of those that died in the armed conflict were men, women faced the burdens of those tragedies. Women were often assigned the traditional roles of caring for others and providing emotional support, and were responsible for raising children and carrying out daily domestic activities. Women whose husbands were killed were also left with taking on the additional role as economic provider. Whilst some women were directly involved in the conflict as fighters, others took on the role of peacebuilders.
Sofia from Cordoba recounts:
“I left with my seven children and another I carried in my belly… they killed my husband in front of us. I left without my husband, without land, without clothing, without money… with nothing! Only with all those children. I arrived in another town to find a way to support all those children, I couldn’t let them die of hunger. There was no time for sadness, there was no time for anything. I had to look for a place to sleep, something to do to get some bread and aguadepanela (a tea made of raw sugar) for the children.”
Life as a fighter and peacebuilder
Like many others, Betsy, a former fighter in the FARC, didn’t join the FARC because she thought it would be an adventure. She joined at a young age due to the lack of opportunities in the countryside and lack of options for her education.
‘The best family and the best path that I could have chosen in those circumstances was the FARC because unlike the attitudes and the actions of the Colombian army the FARC always instilled values”.
Betsy values her experiences in the FARC because she stayed away from problems such as drug use and was able to focus and stay educated. Reflecting on her 27 years of service:
"It is a matter of having goals, projections and a lot of conviction. The role of the woman warrior, as they call it, is the role of the woman who wants to bring about change in Colombian society. We women in the social and armed struggle have taken up the historical legacies left to us by those indigenous women who gave everything for the emancipation of the people in resistance".
When Peace was being negotiated, Betsy dedicated herself to explaining what the peace process was to rural communities and what it meant for them. She believes that Peace is the dream of all Colombians.
Former FARC fighter
The Guerillas arrived in Jordan’s village when he was 15, and convinced him to join. Although he was scared to lose his freedom, Jordan joined the FARC because he thought he might get to finally meet his mother, who he had never met, as he knew that she had been imprisoned for fighting against the FARC.
But the most painful thing is that Jordan never got to meet his mother:
"They took her away from me when I was on my way to meet her. They wouldn't let me see her. She was a militia member and they were going to release her. Later, a boy told me that they had killed her. At that moment I was empty, I felt as if they had taken a piece of my soul and I cried like a child. I never met her to have asked her the reasons for leaving me alone.
"That hit me very hard, I was completely demoralised. I endured five years in the guerrilla ranks. There was an opportunity and I escaped in 2004. I ran from 8:00 in the morning until 4:00 in the afternoon, resting for short periods. I went to the army’s base in La Macarena feeling terrified because I was afraid to turn myself in"
After turning himself in to the security forces, Jordan was sent to Bogotá and invited to join the army, but he did not accept because the lives of his family members in the countryside would be threatened. He spent three months in a halfway house, then joined a reintegration programme, where he was helped and encouraged to continue his high school studies.
Peacebuilder and Human Rights Defender
Nini remembers the surge of paramilitarism that occured in the early 2000s - her father Tiberio was assassinated by them as they accused him of being a guerilla when she knew this was not true. As a victim of the conflict, Nini struggled to get recognition for the suffering she went through so she joined Arauca's victims roundtable to try and find the truth of what had happened to him.
“I needed to heal a wound and that was for the truth to be told, that my father was not a bandit, that he was not part of any armed actor outside the law. For me, the most sacred thing was the truth and for it to be known publicly, it was like a dignification for my family, for myself and for my father's name”.
From this she eventually became the executive of the national victims roundtable. She makes sure that voices of victims and women are heard and that their rights are respected.