Christian Aid Ireland recently hosted in Dublin two inspiring women from Colombia whose life’s work has been to champion human rights and support survivors of gender-based violence.
Katerin Jurado Díaz is a lawyer and Director of Sisma Mujer, an Irish Aid funded local partner of Christian Aid Ireland that provides legal and other essential support to survivors of sexual violence committed during Colombia’s armed conflict.
Katerin was joined by Yirley Velasco Garrido, a human rights defender and Director of Mujeres Sembrando Vida (Women Sowing Life), an organisation which supports women in northern Colombia’s Montes de María region. This includes survivors of domestic and sexual violence, including acts perpetrated during the armed conflict.
“We have been working together with Sisma Mujer for more than 17 years and thanks to this, many of the women we are supporting can get access to psychosocial and legal support,” Yirley said.
“We have a sowing workshop for women at our main office so that they can learn skills to earn money. When a woman is economically independent from her abuser, it reduces the risk of violence that she might face. At the same time, the workshop is a meeting point where women can talk about their experiences and find support,” she added.
Yirley herself survived sexual violence. While just a teenager she was sexually assaulted by paramilitaries during the notorious El Salado massacre in 2000 - thought to be one of the worst massacres committed during Colombia’s conflict.
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We work with survivors to develop strategies for healing. Though we understand that when you suffer this kind of violence, you cannot go back to live the way things were before. We provide women with psychological, emotional and legal support as well as to help them to become human rights defenders able to demand their rights from the authorities.
Yirley says that Sisma’s support has been instrumental in making sure the voices of women who were victims of sexual violence during the conflict are heard. A state reparations plan was put in place to support survivors of the El Salado massacre, which saw some repair works carried out in the town and some families receiving housing and financial support. However, according to Yirley, the views of women survivors were overlooked.
“Women leaders realised that the needs of women were not considered in the reparations plan. In 2017, we lodged a complaint along with Sisma Mujer to the constitutional court to ensure that women including the survivors of sexual violence, were included in plans for El Salado. The court ruled in our favour,” Yirley said.
While Yirley returned to El Salado for a time in 2003, continuous threats from different armed groups against her for the work she does eventually forced her to leave once again and displaced her many times more since. The threats continue till this day and involve menacing leaflets put through the doors of her office, family home and relatives’ homes to direct phone calls and texts threatening her life and that of her family. Sisma have been instrumental in getting state funded protection measures for Yirley put in place, including round the clock protection from two armed bodyguards, access to an armed vehicle and a bulletproof vest.
“Sisma was very keen to ensure that Yirley was properly protected because she really was and still is at imminent risk. And this risk not only has an impact on her, it has an impact on her family. Many organisations say the best way to be safe is to leave but Yirley doesn’t want to leave here and we understand that, so we said we were going to do everything possible to ensure to reduce the risks,” Katerin said.
“First, we went to the Colombian state, but this didn’t work. So, we then went to the Inter American Commission on Human Rights. The commission demanded that the government protect Yirley.”
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During their visit to Dublin, Katerin and Yirley met with politicians in Leinster House to update them on the implementation of the peace agreement in Colombia, the UN Resolution on Women, Peace and Security, as well as the need for continued support to human rights defenders.
“We conveyed a positive message to the Irish politicians that women are the main ones supporting peace. In the last few years, we have seen less and less support from the international community. Something that we stressed was the need to have the international community’s support because this support means we can have more protection,” Yirley said.
“As part of peacebuilding, women human rights defenders must be able to do their work safely. This means that all the measures of the peace agreement have to be implemented,” Katerin added.
“We need to see a peace in which the state military and the illegal armed groups acknowledge that there was sexual violence, that this was systematic and used as a weapon of war. And there must be a guarantee that this will never happen again.”
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