Sexual Violence Against Women Is Weapon Of War In Colombia

By Mario A. Flores
Impunity Watch Reporter, South America

 

BOGOTÁ, Colombia – A coalition of 23 local and national women's NGOs released the results of their VII Report on the Sexual Violence Against Women. The report's findings point to thousands of cases of sexual violence against women by right-wing paramilitaries and leftist guerrillas that go unreported. The victims are just too afraid to talk. The report also found that most of these cases go unpunished.

 

The report asserts that the women are victims of forced prostitution, sex slavery, rape, sex trade and sexual harassment.  According to the report, women are being used as weapons of war by different armed groups intent on provoking fear in other groups.

 

The NGOs have been campaigning to make women aware of their rights as victims and to push prosecutors to question paramilitaries about sexual violence.

 

The strategy seems to be working. In May 2007, there were only 12 cases of sexual violence filed with prosecutors appointed to carry out Colombia's special Justice and Peace Law. According to the NGOs, today 228 cases have been filed.

 

However, the report also claims that of 115 confirmed cases of sexual violence against women by armed groups between 2006-2007, fully 81 percent are attributable to law enforcement.

 

Patricia Buriticá says the problem is yet to be seen in its full dimension. Buriticá leads an NGO known as Women's Peace Initiative, which offers psychological and legal assistance to victims of sexual violence. She has traveled throughout Colombia interviewing survivors of massacres about the level of sexual violence.

 

According to Buriticá, sexual violence was a constant in every massacre carried out by paramilitary forces as they expanded their control throughout the country between 1997 and 2005. There are hundreds of stories of women being raped, sexually tortured, and mutilated before being killed, says Buriticá. Once they established control, the paramilitaries would often use village women as sex slaves.

 

In one town Buriticá visited, there are so many children of paramilitary fighters that they are known locally as the "paraquitos" or "little paramilitaries." In another, the local warlord was known as the "Drill" and reportedly would summon a different woman each night. "A shop owner who refused to send his wife to the warlord was killed the next day," Buriticá says.

 

For more information, please see:
 
El Tiempo - Violencia sexual contra las mujeres, arma de guerra en Colombia, dice ONG - 25 May 2009

 

El Tiempo – La violencia sexual como arma de guerra – 20 May 2009

 

The Christian Science Monitor - In Colombia, rape now being prosecuted as weapon of war – 11 May 2009