With the right to defend

In many countries around the world the defending of human rights is often interconnected with serious risks. The Colombian human rights defender Nancy Fiallo from Women’s Civil Society Assembly for Peace (Asamblea de Mujeres de la Sociedad Civil por la Paz) visited four different cities in Sweden during 12-19 September to give seminars to highlight her experiences from the Colombian context. She was invited by the Colombia Group, of which Civis is a member.

During her seminar in Gothenburg, Nancy emphasized the importance of women in peace building initiatives. The lack of women’s experiences in conflict perpetuates and institutionalizes women’s marginalization in the political processes after conflict and they need to be included as actors of change instead of only being seen as victims. Colombia has a long history of peace negotiations and there has been a constant challenge of trying to get a better gender balance where women help shape the agenda.

Nancy Fiallo has been working with human rights issues in Colombia for more than 20 years and says that the aggressions and attacks towards human rights defenders have been increasing during the years. She reports that the statistics show that one human rights defender got attacked every one and a half day between January and June 2011.

Threats are the most common form of attack and are normally done with the use of flyers, e-mails, communiqués and telephone calls. According to Fiallo, there is a clear connection between the increase of aggressions towards human right defenders, social leaders, organizations working with internal refugees and the sensitive questions that concern the framework of truth, justice and compensation, advocacy work regarding land, victims of the conflict and indigenous people’s rights in Colombia.

Furthermore, human rights defenders have also become the target of extreme violence. During the first semester of 2011, 29 people were murdered as a consequence of their work related to human rights. Fiallo points out that the murders are a strong indicator of the critical humanitarian crisis in Colombia and that the governmental protection system needs to be brought to attention and questioned. The number of attacks shows a lack of preventive action and effective policy framework from the authorities.

Nancy Fiallo herself has become the victim of death threats ever since she started observing and documenting the trials concerning the so-called parapolitíca scandal in October 2010. Parapolitíca is the name of the national scandal that was made public in 2006 revealing collaboration and illegal links between politicians and paramilitary groups in Colombia.

Some of the trials have been overshadowed and have taken place in empty courtrooms. Many of the politicians have been convicted but punished with very short penalties. The penalties can be seen as very unjust since it in many cases is the matter of politicians and warlords who are responsible for the death of thousands of people in the Colombian conflict.

Fiallo describes the judicial processes as historical and highlights the importance of the involvement of human right defenders and the civil society. Despite her own death threats she states that the representation of the civil society during the trials is important so that the judges dare to judge fair punishments and so that the trials concerning these important topics are done just and correct.

In the seminar when asked what drives her to continue working for human rights even though she keeps getting threats, Nancy says: "When you see the criminal acts against the civil society every day and against humanity you need to do something. If we are many we can make a difference".