After riding deep into the jungle to interview the leaders of Colombia’s armed factions, journalist Maria Cristina Caballero took courageous action to end the violence in her country. With support from the International Red Cross, the National Commission on Conciliation, and the newsmagazine Cambio, she published “Peace on the Table,” a 60-page document presenting the views of each party in this long-standing conflict—the government, civil society groups, and rebel factions. Ms. Caballero, a fellow at Harvard University’s Kennedy School Center for Public Leadership, continues to educate others on the war, regularly publishing articles on aspects of the conflict. She has received numerous awards for her courage and determination, including the Simon Bolivar National Prize for Journalism, the Inter-American Press Association’s Human Rights Journalism Award, and the Committee to Protect Journalists’ World Press Freedom Award. (Last updated 11.2003)

The Colombian government’s attempts to quell a 40-year-old insurgency campaign have been complicated by the involvement of drug money and border disputes with neighbor Venezuela. During her tenure as Colombia’s foreign minister, María Emma Mejía worked to solve these problems, participating as a government negotiator in talks with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and National Liberation Army (ELN), working with the United States to stem the illicit drug trade, and overseeing a significant drop in the number of violent incidents at the Colombian-Venezuelan border. Ms. Mejía has been presidential adviser for security in Medellín and the Colombian ambassador to Spain, as well as the minister of education. She holds degrees from the Universidad Pontifica Bolivariana de Medellín and the Universidad del Valle. (06.2004)

Committed to sustainable peace in Colombia, Martha Segura is executive director of the Colombian Confederation of Non-Governmental Organizations, a network of some 1,100 NGOs throughout the country. Created in 1989 as a UN project, the Confederation is one of several organizations working to end the decades-old war by coordinating the peace-building efforts of the government, the private sector, international agencies, and NGOs. Ms. Segura has represented the NGO community in negotiations and was instrumental in the adoption of the Programmatic Agreement for Peace, signed by members of the Confederation, international agencies, and the government. She has facilitated innovative strategy sessions that bring together representatives from Colombia’s military and civil society, groups that have traditionally worked in isolation from one another. (Last updated 02.2004)

Conflict continues to simmer in Colombia, where the 1990s saw a sharp increase in violence in the 40-year insurgency. Focusing on women’s political participation and violence against women, Nancy Tapias Torrado is a consultant to the Gender Issues Oversight Board of Colombia’s Presidential Advisory Council for the Equality of Women. In 2004, she was selected by the UN’s Division for the Advancement of Women to participate in a Commission on the Status of Women panel on women’s equal participation in conflict prevention, management, and resolution and in post-conflict peace building. A lawyer, researcher, and human rights activist, Ms. Tapias Torrado has organized prisoners in the District Jail of Bogotá to advocate for peace and conflict resolution; as a result of this work, she cofounded the Victimology and Criminology Institute to research and disseminate information regarding victims of crimes and victims of abuse of power. From 1999 to 2003, she directed the Human Rights, Humanitarian Law, and Peace Program at Javeriana University and taught seminars on the country’s peace process, law and war, and humanitarian law. (Last updated 02.2004)

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