by Vanessa Kritzer
on October 13, 2010
We know that Juanes’ good looks and smooth voice holds a special power over throngs of fans worldwide, but it wasn’t until last month that we learned that he can actually stop bullets. When Juanes returned to his hometown of Medellín to join local musical and civil society groups in a concert on International Peace Day in one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods, Comuna Trece, they convinced hundreds of members of the city’s violent gangs to commit themselves to peace.
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by Lisa Haugaard
on August 24, 2010
Colombia's Constitutional Court issued an important decision last week
which sent Colombia's new administration back to the drawing board to
secure approval for a U.S.-Colombian military base agreement. The
decision effectively struck down the contentious agreement, chastising
the Colombian executive for having failed to get approval from
Colombia's Congress, and requiring them now to seek congressional
endorsement before moving forward.
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by Carmen Miller
on October 08, 2010
Afro-Colombian communities in the past year have faced increasing threats of displacement and violence. On September 21st, LAWGEF joined the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) and other partner organizations in organizing a public event in DC where Clemencia Carabali Rodallega, a prominent Afro-Colombian leader, spoke about the dire situation that many communities are in today. The following video and quotes were taken from that event.
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by Lisa Haugaard
on August 19, 2010
On August 13th, a car bomb was detonated near the Caracol Radio headquarters, one of the largest networks in Colombia. LAWGEF and its partners issued the following statement in response:
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In 2005, I visited the community of San José de Apartadó, Colombia. A group of poor farmers who had been repeatedly displaced from their homes by violence, they had decided to call themselves a “peace community” and reject violence from all sides—paramilitaries, guerrillas and the army. Yet the community was subjected to ever more harassment and violence, including by the local 17th army brigade. Some 170 members of the peace community have been assassinated since 1997. My visit came soon after seven members of the peace community, including three children, and a local farmer had been massacred and dismembered. The community members had left their army-occupied town to construct a bare-bones, dirt-floor village down the road.
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by Lisa Haugaard
on July 27, 2010
A big white teddy bear sat on top of one of the little coffin boxes, and red roses on the other three. The remains of the four sisters were finally being returned to their mother, Blanca Nieves Meneses.
“I never thought that this is the way they would be returned to me,” said their surviving sister Nancy. “I always kept hoping that they would be returned alive.”
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