Inclusive Security: Women Waging Peace hosted 15 Colombian women peace builders in May 2004 for a week of meetings, presentations, and events—to elevate women’s voices in Colombia and urge the US government, international governmental organizations, think tanks, and non-governmental organizations to include women in all peace-building efforts.

Read the conference report.

Read about the panel presentation at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Read about this event in the US Agency for International Development newsletter (page two).

Women have been victims and actors in Colombia’s war and peace movement. They represent more than 50 percent of internally-displaced persons (IDPs) and head more than 30 percent of IDP households¹; but they also have been combatants and supporters of the armed groups. Women’s engagement in peacemaking increased in the early 1990s and has evolved into a complex network of national and local organizations. By 2002, 17 percent of assassinated and disappeared leaders and activists throughout Colombia were women.²

Colombia is still entrenched in violence. The 2002 collapse of the Pastrana-FARC dialogues has led to disillusionment within Colombia’s peace movement, but women’s groups are leading new efforts, raising awareness of the human costs of conflict, and calling for negotiations that include civil society. They are strengthening the peace constituency nationwide and creating common agendas that unite Colombians across racial, geographical, and class boundaries and highlight the root causes of conflict.

Read the Inclusive Security: Women Waging Peace Policy Commission report, In the Midst of War: Women’s Contributions to Peace in Colombia.

Read about Colombian women peace builders.

¹United States Office on Colombia. The Impact of War on Women: Colombian Women’s Struggle. Washington, DC: USOC, 2004. 27 February 2024
²Ibid.

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