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In Colombia so far this year, 15 leading human rights defenders have been assassinated, 1,424 since the signing of the peace agreements in 2016, according to Indepaz (Institute for Development and Peace Studies). Agreements that are difficult to implement, with many actors who do not want to and who use violence to continue to control territories. Carmen Maryinis Berbel Martínez from Chocó and Héctor Andrés Dicue from Cauca explain the reality of their communities and the expectations.
Both have traveled to France to recently participate in the Franco-Colombian Forum ‘Let’s go for peace’, in its second edition. A project that seeks international support for the implementation of the historic 2016 Peace Accords signed with the FARC guerrillas.
Despite this historical signature, violence continues to plague a large part of Colombian territory where there are dozens of active armed groups, especially in more isolated areas where State control is null. 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 directly come to your house, take you and kill you,” denounces Carmen Maryinis Berbel Martínez, an Afro-descendant, human rights defender from the community council of Unguía (Chocó) and who is part of the women’s group ‘ We go for peace.’
‘The armed groups use our bodies to take over the territory’
Berbel Martínez recalls that three armed groups operate in her municipality: the ELN, the Gaitanista Self-Defense Forces of Colombia and others 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 Extense livestock farming.
Traveling with her to France and Belgium to explain the situation and seek support from the international community, Héctor Andrés Dicue, indigenous leader of the Nasa people, belonging to the Páez de Corinto Indigenous Council, in northern Cauca, which is part of the the five departments with the most victims in 2022, as reported by the Ombudsman’s Office with 26 murders of social and environmental leaders out of a total of 215 in the country. 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. In 2018, in some actions in which I was an authority in my territory, because there were direct actions by us as original peoples, within the framework of the autonomy of our territory towards these structures, which causes a direct affectation before the movement, the space geographical area that they occupy in our territory and therefore some tensions arose that once my period of authority ended, I had to leave the territory for a prudent time,” explains Dicue.
‘Total Peace is not only the absence of war’
With the coming to power of Gustavo Petro in 2022, there are many expectations among the indigenous and Afro-descendant community and it was thanks to them that he won the elections after the large demonstrations against Iván Duque in 2021. Petro is committed to Total Peace, that is, negotiations 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 because it includes the messages of civil society and 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 of government 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 who asks that they be perennial processes.
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, which is the Clan del Golfo”, deplores this leader from Chocó who emphasizes the problem of the recruitment of children and the the importance of the State not criminalizing the families that sit down to negotiate with the armed groups in the so-called humanitarian dialogues.
In this process, the role of the international community is very important. 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.
#EscalaenParis It is also on Facebook. A program coordinated by Florence Valdes and presented by Aida Palau. Conducted by Souheil Khedir, Mattias Taylor and Guillaume Buffet.
