Healing for Sexual Violence Survivors in Colombia

This past July, Colombia’s Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) published a groundbreaking decision charging former Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC-EP) members with crimes against humanity of gender persecution—instances when someone is targeted and faced with violence based on their gender—and in intersection with racial and ethnic persecution. This initial decision is unprecedented.

Your support made it possible for MADRE to partner with CUNY School of Law’s Human Rights and Gender Justice Clinic to provide legal analysis to JEP judicial actors regarding crimes of persecution based on gender and based on gender in intersection with race/ethnicity. The decision found sufficient grounds to bring the FARC-EP to justice and recognize the structural and historical discrimination Indigenous, Afro-Colombian Peoples, women and girls, and LGBTQIA+ people of all genders faced. The JEP charged gender persecution connected to an array of crimes, including torture, enslavement, killing, sexual violence, and other crimes against Afro-descendant and Indigenous women and girls. The JEP also charged prosecution for acts of violence against LGBTQIA+ for the first time in history, among which 16 Afro-Colombian were identified.

Sexual violence was deemed as a crime against humanity and a war crime, making clear that sexual violence can be both an underlying act of gender persecution while being charged as a crime in itself. The JEP also found that forced displacement, and other crimes against women and girls constituted gender persecution.

With a better understanding of the forms of gender persecution and the discrimination that underlies these crimes, we can strengthen work to support survivors and end cycles of gender-based violence in communities across the globe. Thank you for your generous support as we work with women and girls’ human rights defenders to make lasting change in Colombia.