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In Colombia, 15 human rights defenders have been assassinated so far this year and 1,424 since the signing of the Peace Agreement in 2016, according to the Institute for Development and Peace Studies (Indepaz). Agreements that are difficult to implement, with many actors who do not want to participate and who use violence to continue to control territories. Carmen Maryinis Berbel Martínez from Chocó and Héctor Andrés Dicue from Cauca explain the realities and expectations of their communities.
Both have traveled to France to participate in the Franco-Colombian Forum ‘Let’s go for peace’, in its second edition. Human rights defenders, Carmen Maryinis Berbel Martínez and Héctor Andrés, participate in the project that seeks international support for the implementation of the Peace Agreement signed between the Colombian Government and the extinct FARC guerrilla in 2016.
Despite this historical signature, violence continues to plague a large part of Colombian territory where there are dozens of active armed groups, especially in the most isolated areas of the country where there is less State control. Groups that intimidate, extort, recruit minors and kill social leaders.
“The armed actors change their threat technique every day. Before they sent you notices, pamphlets and now they come directly to your house, take you away and kill you,” denounces Carmen Maryinis Berbel Martínez, a human rights defender from the community council of Unguía (Chocó) and who is part of the women’s group ‘Vamos for the peace’.
“The armed groups use our bodies to take over the territory”
Berbel Martínez recalls that several armed groups operate in her municipality: the National Liberation Army (ELN), the Gaitanista Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AGC), and other groups from the Clan del Golfo.
“The armed groups use the dispossession of the territory and also our women’s bodies to take over the entire municipality and rural areas,” explains the human rights defender, who is also working on a project to recover areas deteriorated by logging, agriculture and extensive livestock.
Along with her, Héctor Andrés Dicue, indigenous leader of the Nasa people, belonging to the Páez de Corinto Indigenous Council, in northern Cauca, has traveled to France and Belgium to explain the situation and seek support from the international community. This is one of the five departments with the most victims in 2022, with 26 murders of social and environmental leaders out of a total of 215 in the country, according to the Ombudsman’s Office. He himself has been threatened.
“Unfortunately, this area is the one with the highest number of victims due to its geographical and strategic importance in the armed conflict and in drug trafficking routes,” explains Dicue. He also recounts the tensions that exist in that area of the country due to control of the land, some that led him to leave his territory “for a prudent time.”
“Total peace is not just the absence of war”
With the coming to power of the leftist Gustavo Petro in 2022, there are many expectations among the indigenous and Afro-descendant communities. In part, his triumph is due to these sectors of society, since they were part of the massive demonstrations against Iván Duque in 2021. Petro is committed to “total peace”, this includes negotiation with all the armed groups in the country .
“In this scenario, what the social and ethnic organizations in the country are asking for is that the State allow the communities to have a much more active role in these new exercises that are being carried out, since it has been our communities that live day by day. Today the rigor of war and peace is not something that is planned from Bogotá, from a ministry, it is planned with the main actor that is the community”, affirms Héctor Andrés Dicue.
The community leader hopes that the National Development Plan presented by Petro will be approved in Congress “as it is”. He points out that this project “contains the messages of civil society, social and ethnic organizations that we have requested for many years ”. Congress has until May 7 to review it.
“There is urgency,” explains Carmen Maryinis Berbel Martínez for her part. “There always has been, in four years in office decades of war will not be changed, but we have expectations with this new government. In Colombia there is a presence of 64 armed groups, of which only 24 have shown interest in the dialogues and at the moment there are only five advanced processes, where the most advanced is with the ELN”, analyzes Berbel Martínez.
Guarantees for humanitarian dialogues
“We are demanding that there be no repetition because already in the municipality in 2006 there was a demobilization of alias ‘Alemán’ (Freddy Rendón Herrera, a paramilitary who expropriated land during the 1990s). And what happened? We had a breather, but a few months later another group made a presence in the territory, which is one of those that is now, the Clan del Golfo”, deplores the leader of Chocó. She also emphasizes the problem of child recruitment and the importance of the State not criminalizing families. Berbel urgently sees the government sit down to negotiate with the armed groups in the so-called humanitarian dialogues.
In this process, the role of the international community is key. That is why Berbel and Dicue have traveled to France and Belgium where they met with French and European legislators.
“We need the role of the European Union to be much more active in the territory, that it not be limited to sending resources, but that there be a whole process of international verification and that the sources of verification are not only the Colombian institutions, but that it be also at a regional and local level, in the territory, with the organizations”, concludes Dicue.
