Film Screening and Discussion with Afro-Colombian Leaders Featured in PBS' "Women, War & Peace"

The Washington Office on Latin America, Latin America Working Group Education Fund, Global Rights, Black Communities’ Process, TransAfrica Forum, RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights, and U.S. Office on Colombia invite you to the:

Screening and Discussion of The War We Are Living
Part of the PBS Series "Women, War & Peace"

This documentary highlights the efforts of two extraordinary Afro-Colombian women who are defying powerful mining interests and paramilitary death threats to protect their community and the land that sustains them.

With:
Francia Marquez and Clemencia Carabali
Afro-Colombian Leaders Featured in the Documentary

Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA)
1666 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 400
Washington, DC 20009
6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.

Spanish interpretation and light refreshments provided
If you wish to attend, please contact Anthony Dest at adest@wola.org

The US-Colombia FTA and soaring gold prices will incentivize foreign investment in mining in Colombia, a sector plagued with violence against Afro-Colombian and indigenous peoples in Colombia. The Colombian government is rapidly developing extractive industries throughout the country, and today, 40% of Colombia's land has been licensed to, or is being solicited by, multinational companies in order to develop mining projects. Please join us for a documentary screening followed by a conversation with Clemencia Carabali and Francia Marquez, two renowned Afro-descendant leaders from Colombia. The courageous women’s efforts to defend the land rights of Afro-Colombians formed the basis of the Colombia episode of the 2011 PBS series “Women, War and Peace.” As illegal gold mining concessions threaten to forcibly displace several Afro-descendant and indigenous communities in Colombia, ethnic leaders continue to face threats for upholding their rights.

Despite a legal framework that should protect Afro-Colombians’ collective land rights, illegal gold mining continues in the land defended by Marquez and Carabali. Private investors and right-wing paramilitaries are threatening, intimidating, displacing, and killing members of communities who defend their rights. Recently, paramilitaries massacred local community miners in Ms. Marquez’s community of La Toma. In 2009, northern Cauca formed part of a hearing before the Inter-American Human Rights Commission as an exemplary case of the violation of Afro-descendant and indigenous peoples’ constitutional rights in Colombia, and this case also forms part of the discussion on human rights certification of U.S. military assistance for Colombia.