The Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), the Latin America Working Group (LAWG), the International Institute for Race and Equality, the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), Diakonia and Act Church of Sweden (grantors of Colombia’s National Human Rights Prize) cordially invite you to the following event:
The Courageous Leaders Building Peace in Colombia:
Meet the 2020 Winners of the National Human Rights Prize
2022 will be pivotal for Colombia’s politics, for its transitional justice system and peace accord, and for advancing human and ethnic rights. The upcoming and hotly contested presidential elections will result in a new government that will take office on August 7. The end of April 2022 marks the one-year anniversary of the national civic strike and the mass social protests that resulted in violence and human rights abuses at the hands of public security forces. Colombia’s Commission for the Clarification of Truth, Coexistence and Non-Repetition (Comisión para el Esclarecimiento de la Verdad, la Convivencia y la No repetición, CEV) is expected to release its report in June and the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (Jurisdicción Especial para la Paz, JEP) will begin to deliver sentences on its macro cases. Nearly six years after the FARC peace accord was signed, implementing the agreement continues to be challenging. Under President Iván Duque’s administration, Colombia has seen an increase in violence and indiscriminate massacres, internal displacements, and multidimensional humanitarian emergencies that affect internally displaced Colombians, Venezuelan migrants and refugees, and other foreign nationals using the country as a migration corridor. These domestic humanitarian crises disproportionately affect Afro-Colombian and Indigenous leaders and communities.
Within this complicated backdrop, human rights defenders, social leaders, and Afro-Colombian, Indigenous, and environmental defenders continue to be targeted and assassinated at alarming rates. The 2020 winners of Colombia’s National Human Rights Prize are all courageous leaders who have made an outstanding contribution to human rights while risking their own lives. The winners will be in Washington, D.C. to discuss the current situation in Colombia, their visions for peace and justice, and how the United States and the international community can best shape programs and inform policies in favor of peace and human rights.
Event Details:
Tuesday, April 19, 2022
12:30 p.m. – 1:30 p.m. EDT
This event will be in-person and live streamed on Zoom.
RSVP for in-person attendance:
Email Maria Rita Furtado
mfurtado@wola.org
Washington Office on Latin America, WOLA
1666 Connecticut Avenue NW, Suite 400, Washington, DC 20009
This event will also be live streamed on Zoom:
Simultaneous interpretation will be available between Spanish and English on Zoom.
Please note that if you are attending in-person and require interpretation, you will need to bring a device that can connect to Zoom and headphones.
Panelists:
Marino Córdoba Berrio
Afro-Colombian Leader
National Association for Displaced Afro-Colombians (AFRODES)
Leyner Palacios Asprilla
Afro-Colombian Victims’ Leader and Truth Commissioner
Commission for the Clarification of Truth, Coexistence and Non-Repetition
Mario Baicue Escue
Indigenous Leader, Kiwe Thegnas/Indigenous Guard of Toribio, Tacueyo and San Francisco of the Nasa Life Project
Association of Indigenous Cabildos of Toribio, Tacueyo, and San Francisco
Daniela Stefania Rodríguez
Human Rights Defender
Transitional Justice section of the Committee for Solidarity with Political Prisoners Foundation (CSPP)
Moderator:
Gimena Sánchez-Garzoli
Director for the Andes
WOLA