Presentation

The Humanas Corporation calls for a participatory and concerted process with various civil society organizations, with the concurrence of the agencies and the UN system to perform a symbolic Court against sexual violence in the context of the Colombian armed conflict, to be held on September 21, 2011.

We conceive the Court as a place aimed at making visible to the public the impact sexual violence has had in the context of armed conflict, especially emphasizing the rights of victims and the need to overcome the impunity that has characterized these crimes, and demand timely and effective attention by the state.

THE SYMBOLIC COURT AGAINST SEXUAL VIOLENCE WITHIN THE COLOMBIAN ARMED CONFLICT, will be held with the support of FOS Colombia, the project women as subjects of rights: Inserting communication on the agenda of strategic issues on promoting peace and for women, which seeks to help address the shortfall in Colombian public agenda for debate and reflection about the discrimination faced by women, the differential impact the conflict has had on them and the need for women victims have access to truth, justice and reparation, as well as positioning the process of building peace in the country involves not only the negotiation of the armed conflict, but the construction of new gender pacts that allow the inclusion of women and the full exercise of their rights.

We want the Court to constitute a joint action of various civil society organizations so that we extend this proposal to all women and human rights’ organizations to consider that this scenario allows us to advance the fight against impunity for sexual crimes against women on the basis of the Colombian armed conflict.

This paper proposes some basic starting points for the process we hope to share with you.


Symbolic Courts in the World

Symbolic Courts are a strategy of civil society organizations to counter the effects of invisibility that characterize some human rights violations and to demonstrate the impunity surrounding them.

There is no single way to make a symbolic court, but there are some basic features, such as:

a) Spaces of recognition for victims
b) Public events that you know the gravity of reality
c) They don’t replace justice nor its guarantors but represents the horizon towards which justice should point and what its guarantors should do.

In particular, women's organizations for the "courts" (non-standard or non-formal) strategies have become significant public face high levels of impunity for sexual violence in situations of war or armed conflict.

An example has been the Women's International Tribunal on War Crimes for the prosecution of sexual slavery by the army japonés1 (or "Tokyo Tribunal") resulted from an initiative of women in partnership and solidarity with international experts and lawyers with the aim of setting a precedent for the prosecution of war crimes against women from the perspective of women's human rights.

The importance of this court was that it was a collective of victims from different countries (Philippines, North Korea and South China, Taiwan, Holland, Indonesia, Malaysia and Japan) that opened the stage for memory and recognition was postponed historic given the advanced age of the survivors.

Also Latin America has come to this figure; for example, the Court of awareness against sexual violence against women during the armed conflict in Guatemala was conducted last year as an alternative to access justice for female survivors of sexual violence during the armed conflict in Guatemala. In particular, objectives were to break the silence surrounding these crimes, to make a symbolic political action, to carry out an exercise of reflection with the responsible authorities to ensure justice, and to create conditions that enable its application to cases of both past and present.

In general, the perspective of women has been that Symbolic courts are an act of symbolic reparation that has the potential to raise social awareness, make visible what happens to women in their own voice, and serve as empowering acts for them. To which it is added that such courts have functioned as a strategy to generate significant social debate among organizations or institutions with little interest for the crimes of sexual violence and even serve as a pedagogical exercise to guarantee the right to justice.


Colombia’s Experience

In Colombia, some women's organizations have resorted to regular courts or formal response to the impunity that has surrounded the sexual crimes committed against women in the context of armed conflict. Some examples:

a) Court of truth against crimes against humanity towards women convened in Cartagena on Route Pacific Women in November 1998.
b) Cuts of Colombian Women "Against Forgetting and for Re-Existence," performed between 2005 and 2006 under the leadership of women's organizations in Cali.
c) Symbolic Court of truth " Campaign to spell out on skin" organized by the Pacific route, and We Believe Women in Medellin in November 2007.
d) Court of violations of human rights of women, without the voice of women the truth is not complete, organized by women's organizations in Medellin in March 2010.

The Symbolic Court against sexual violence in the context of the armed conflict in Colombia: Bogotá, September 26, 2011


Justification

In Colombia, sexual violence in the context of the conflict happens in a systematic and/or generalized form; however, the response of the state in preventing and punishing these crimes has been insufficient and female victims of these events are not yet guaranteed their rights to truth, justice, and reparation.

The serious situation of violations of human rights was reported by the Bureau of labor: Women and armed conflict in April 2001 led to the visit of the Special Rapporteur on violence against women in the United Nations between 1 and 7 November that same year. The report by the Rapporteur to carry out recommendations made by the Colombian state against the impunity that have lost validity: first, the immediate adoption of concrete measures to combat the high rate of impunity for violations of the rights of women, second, an independent justice system that is responsible to investigate and punish those responsible for violations of the rights of women.

In 2006, the Rapporteur for the rights of women in the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) has documented in its report that women in the Colombian conflict are most vulnerable to becoming victims of various forms of physical, psychological, and sexual violence, which are realized mainly in sexual abuse, forced recruitment, forced prostitution, and early pregnancies.

The complexity and severity of sexual violence from the armed conflict led the Constitutional Court to recognize the pervasiveness of sexual violence in the context of armed conflict (Order 092 of 2008), in particular in the part Risk of violence exploitation or sexual abuse within the armed conflict, the Court noted that the official and unofficial invisibility, the silence of the victims, and the impunity for perpetrators constituted an aggravation of the violation of the rights of victims to justice, truth, reparation, and guarantees of non-repetition. That is to say, barriers of the investigation of the facts of the state in turn promote almost total impunity for such heinous crimes.

The prosecution made no progress in the investigations of cases of sexual violence that were referred by the Constitutional Court in the said Order. According to the Bureau that tracks the performance of such orders on a sample of 40 cases, only two are in the trial phase, five convicted, and one pending.

Moreover, the process of implementing the Act 975 of 2005 (Justice and Peace) has been characterized by the continuing denial of the paramilitaries to acknowledge its responsibility for the crimes of sexual violence committed against women, to This is compounded by the vast majority of the judicial authorities failed to investigate sexual crimes, which in turn has meant that those responsible were not punished. The lack of investigation and punishment of crimes of sexual violence is evident in reviewing the information released by the National Prosecution Unit for Justice and Peace, December 1, 2010, the only documented behaviors 323 765 0.2 % correspond to sexual violence while the facts confessed only 67,402 0.06% corresponding to these offenses.

More recently, the Committee against Torture expressed concern about the high incidence of sexual violence, as well as against the practice as a weapon of war, in particular referred to the importance of the Colombian government to take urgent and effective measures around to: comply with the orders of the Constitutional Court in its Order 092 of 2008, the investigation, prosecution and punishment of sexual violence attributed to the police; the systematic instruction in forensic reports documenting signs of torture or sexual violence

Colombia faces the challenge of overcoming the gaps referred to the rights of women victims of armed conflict based on the recognition of the claims and policies organized by the victims themselves, women's organizations, and human rights groups.

Performing a symbolic Court this year is strategic as it is doing before Congress of the Republic Bill of victims and the Bill of land.

The gamble with the Tribunal is to give symbolic sexual violence in armed conflict the public treatment commensurate with the seriousness and complexity that had this crime in our country, which derive their possible ranges:

a) To inform the public the extent of sexual violence against women within the Colombian armed conflict, its particular characteristics and the different forms it has adopted a strategy of war.
b) Evidence that sexual violence under the armed conflict has not been investigated, indictment or punished.
c) Stating that the realization of a lasting peace and bet only possible when democratic rights are guaranteed to truth, justice and reparations for women victims of sexual violence under the armed conflict in Colombia.


Objectives

a) To generate a broad public debate against sexual violence in the armed conflict that incorporates recognition of the victims, the social condemnation of the events and the manifestation of "alarm" at the high levels of impunity.
b) Sensitize decision makers on the severity of sexual violence under the armed conflict to give effective responses to women victims.


Subjects

a) Historical approach of sexual violence within the Colombian armed conflict.
b) Characteristics, trends and patterns of sexual violence within the Colombian armed conflict.
c) Effects of sexual health and women's bodies and their emotional and psychosocial impacts.
d) Barriers to access to justice faced by women victims of sex crimes within the Colombian armed conflict, including the nature of the evidence and the forensic reports.


Strategies

a) Varied and diverse participation

The diverse participatory nature of the Court, with the result of an ongoing process of consultation with various civil society organizations at national and regional levels, in turn constitutes a strategy in order to guarantee that the Court collect the particularity of the voices of women victims, the accumulated knowledge of women's organizations in understanding the dynamics and effects of sexual violence that is committed for reasons of armed conflict on women, and the complaint and to the state requirement.

The Humanas Corporation does not seek to be the protagonist of this initiative; our role is to facilitate the collective construction, so we propose:

The Driving Committee: Will contribute to the organization and development of the Court with the design of a technical route to build their laws or principles, drafting documents, preparation of testimony, finding information and data to illustrate the events such as documentary newspaper articles, magazines, records that may exist on the events and, in general, anything that contributes to establishing the truth. Participating organizations: these organizations as experts and knowledgeable persons about the reality of violence against women will participate as actors in the court session and the preparatory working groups will meet in the days before the Court to address specific issues. Observers: we propose that the agencies and the UN system are involved as observers in the preparation and holding of the Court, as well as monitoring the commitments derived from it. Moreover, its presence during the court can help give legitimacy, and may even be necessary to constitute a protective factor for participants.

b) Communication and exposure (Media plan)

Realizing the first of our goals requires us to have a set of parts aimed at different communicative public campaign modes to complement the implementation of the Tribunal. In other words, it is a media plan, which should include communication products such as:

Document the account of the "universality" of sexual violence in armed conflict in Colombia and the historical overview of the seriousness of sexual violence in our country. Website. Humanas extends the public space created on the web to place the issue of peace to advertise the court (www.pazconmujeres.org).
Communication tools and pieces for journalists.
Presentation of the Court.
Press conferences.
Live broadcasts of the Court (by alternative means, by radio, Web).


Operation of the Court

The Symbolic Court will recreate some of the components of a traditional formal court with the following characteristics: participation of the victims or their representatives, which requires the organization of the Court and includes strategies such as private or pre-recording interviews to ensure the security and privacy of victims when they require it, statement / expert as they will be their analysis and conclusions which serve as input context of the testimony and sexual violence documented by the Court and filed by victims or their representatives; final pronouncement and female judges on the topics that the Court wants to position itself on the public agenda (including sexual violence as a weapon of war, their characteristics, trends and patterns, effects on health, and psychosocial aspects and barriers in access to justice).


Key Aspects

a) Ensure the confidentiality of victims and witnesses to preserve their dignity.
b) Ensure the safety of victims, their representatives, and the human rights activists participating in the Tribunal.
c) Ensure the media from reporting on the occurrence of the Court and help create the climate of denunciation against the seriousness of sexual violence and impunity prevails.
d) Monitor the implementation of the agreements of the Court.