Eliminating violence against women in Colombia means ending the war

November 25th, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, marks the anniversary of the brutal assassination in 1960, of the three Mirabal sisters, political activists in the Dominican Republic, ordered by Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo.

In Colombia, violence against women continues to be not just an issue of domestic or sexual violence, but of women bearing the greatest burden of the armed conflict. To that end, a coalition of women’s organizations from all over Colombia gathered in Bogota today to call for a negotiated end to country’s the six-decade war.

As the group’s handout explained, all of the armed actors in Colombia’s conflict rape, displace, torture, kidnap and kill women. Children are forcibly recruited for the war. Four million people have been displaced, half of whom are women.

A woman from Bucaramanga in the east of the country explained to me, “we are here to support negotiation, for peace. As women we are very badly treated, by the war, by the paramilitaries, by all of this.”