Martha Segura

Colombia

Martha Segura is executive director of the Colombian Confederation of Non-Governmental Organizations, a network of some 1,100 NGOs. Created in 1989 as a United Nations project, the Confederation is one of several organizations working to end the decades-old war by coordinating peace-building efforts of the government, private sector, international agencies, and NGOs. Ms. Segura has represented the NGO community in peace talks, most significantly as a promoter of the Programmatic Agreement for Peace, signed by members of the Confederation, international agencies, and the government. Prior to her work with the Confederation, Ms. Segura was an Inter-American Development Bank consultant and worked in several departments of the Colombian government, including the Ministry of Education, the Rural Development Fund, and the Program for State Modernization, where she was responsible for developing labor-adjustment programs for displaced workers. She has been a consultant for the Eje Cafetero Reconstruction Project. Based on a new model of collaborative development between government and civil society, the project focuses on coalition building, reconstruction, and job generation in a coffee region destroyed by an earthquake in January 1999.

Ms. Segura’s peace-building activities include:

• promoting the Programmatic Agreement for Peace with civil society groups and coordinating a conference where 300 representatives from NGOs negotiated the Agreement;
• facilitating meetings to build trust and create strategies among NGO and security sector representatives, who traditionally have worked separately, and building coalitions, partnerships, and networks with local, national, and international organizations;
• organizing workshops on nonviolence, social justice, democracy, and coalition building, as well as taking part in conferences with government and international agencies, including a London meeting to raise European support for Colombia’s peace process;
• testifying on a pan-American videoconference on women, peace, and security organized by the Interamerican Commission for Women at the Organization of American States;
• training civil society leaders on human rights;
• coordinating the Capacity Building Project, funded by the city of Madrid, and supporting other development projects by NGOs promoting peace in regions of extreme violence; and
• fostering capacity building and strategic alliances through an Internet project.

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