18TH SESSION OF THE ASSEMBLY OF STATES PARTIES TO THE ROME STATUTE
Day 4 (5 December 2019)
Name of the Event: Impunity and historical debts on access to justice for women and LGBT victims of sexual violence and persecution in Colombia and Mali (Side Event co-hosted by Corporacion Humanas (Colombia), Sisma Mujer (Colombia), Colombia Diversa (Colombia), and MUSONET (Mali))
Overview by: Francisca De Castro, Junior Research Associate PILPG-NL
Main Highlights:
Women have been targeted in conflicts notably in Mali and Colombia. Their access to courts and justice has often been denied in these countries.
The situation is hopefully going to change with the peace process in Mali, and it is currently changing in Colombia although there is still a long road ahead.
Summary of the Event:
The panelists for side event on access to justice for women and LGBT victims included members from MUSONET from Mali, and the 5 Claves from Colombia, a group comprised of 5 different organizations working on women’s rights in Colombia.
Musonet’s representatives started by describing the current situation in Mali. They mentioned that women in Mali remain marginalized. Since 1992 there have been initiatives to reinforce women’s participation in society, but they remain victims of human rights violations. Munoset gave an overview of the current situation and some statistics, including that since 2013, there have been 2783 cases of gender based violence, which have been directed in 93% against women and girls. However, the representatives of Munoset stated that there has been an increase in the awareness on the need of making women’s rights a priority.
With regards to the situation in Colombia, the first panelist was Luz Piedad Caicedo from the NGO Humanas, who spoke on the work of 5 Claves as an NGO comprising other groups that work with women and LGBT rights in Colombia. She talked about the history of the conflict in Colombia, which essentially started by a conflict of uneven distribution of the lands, and the little possibility for farmers to have access to the lands. The original actors of the conflict were groups with Marxists ideologies, but in the 1990s the situation changed and the country witnessed the emergence of extreme right-wing groups such as the paramilitaries. In the 2000s, a first peace agreement was signed with the paramilitaries which included a law “Justicia y Paz” which served as the basis to understand sexual violence in the framework of the conflict. Furthermore, since the peace agreements with the FARC in 2016, Ms. Caicedo continued to explain, the National Prosecutor’s Office had been more open to prosecuting sexual violence, and the Constitutional Court had rendered a sentence which recognized that sexual violence had been committed in mass, and categorized 9 types of sexual violence that had been committed. She emphasized that it was in this framework that the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) was instated.
The second panelist from Colombia was a representative from Sisma Mujer. She said that impunity is latent and that the invisibility of these types of crimes might be the reason. She talked about the JEP’s role in stereotyping sexual violence and the presumption of the causal link between the conflict and the sexual violence. She also touched upon the differential treatment of the victims, as there has been a reluctance by part of state institutions to recognize that members of the armed forces also committed sexual violence, and that victims of sexual violence by legal groups are not treated the same as victims of sexual violence by illegal groups.
The third panelist to speak on Colombia’s situation were Daniela Diaz and Lucia Bacca from Colombia Diversa, who touched upon the situation of the LGBT community during the conflict, and particularly relating to gender based violence. They mentioned two reports which focus on how there have been at least 4 victims from the LGBT community and that many victims remained silenced because of the biases that exist. Furthermore, they talked about how, as an organization, Colombia Diversa has faced backlash by hearing that international justice is not the right mechanism to get justice for the crimes committed against the LGBT community because there is no proof that these crimes are systemic and that it has not crossed the threshold to consider them international crimes.
Finally, Mama Koité Doumbia from the Trust Fund for Victims closed the panel. She talked about the violence committed against women in Mali by giving some examples of the violence that women have suffered, as well was how these victims can be repaired.