(This article was originally published in Turkish at https://jindergi.com/yazi/kolombiyadaki-baris-gorusmelerine-kadinlarin-katilimi/)

Tanja Nijmeijer, former internationalist combatant of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.

It is often said that it is important to include women in peace negotiations because we would soften the discussions, we would socialize more, create a better atmosphere, and so on. In other words, because we, women, tend to be good at dialogue, while men are good at making war. Men are brave warriors; women are caring housewives. Women communicate; men use force. While I don’t necessarily deny all of these arguments – let’s say I’m open to at least discuss them – I do believe there is a much more powerful argument to include women in peace negotiations: women tend to have a better understanding of what it means to be oppressed by patriarchy, and what is needed to tackle the historical discrimination that has taken place against women.

A peace agreement is an excellent opportunity to provide if only just a little bit of justice in order to make up for five thousand years of patriarchy. It is more and more accepted that peace processes are the opportunity, not only to lead to the end of a conflict, but also to be the beginning of carrying out deep transformations, that have been waiting too long for their implementation. For example, transformations in terms of gender equality, which are needed not only in Colombia – where there are only 6 female governors (of 32) and no female mayors in the country -, but world-wide.

In the case of the peace agreement in Colombia, the awareness of the need to include women at the negotiation table and include a gender perspective in the agreements only came after agreements had been made on three points of the agenda, in 2014. When the discussions on rural reforms started, in 2012, I was the only woman representing the FARC delegation, out of 10 people. That is 10%, while women in the FARC-EP made up at least a 25% of the armed force. There was one female negotiator representing the government. The negotiation table was, therefore, a reflection, a mirror, of gender discrimination in Colombian society and in the FARC, while it should have been a reflection of its REAL composition in terms of gender.

In 2014, the gender sub commission was created, composed by (initially) two female negotiators from the FARC and two from the government. Our goal was to include a gender perspective in the agreements that had been made so far, on Rural Reform, Political Participation and Illicit Drugs. Just a handful examples of the provisions that were included: in the point of Rural Reform, single mothers were prioritized for access to land and housing and women in general for access to rural education, especially in non-traditional areas (like technical ones). In Political Participation, guarantees were included for a “balanced representation” of men and women in all the organs created by the Peace Agreement. Provisions on sexual violence were included in the peace tribunal, where these crimes could not apply for amnesty.  

Aside from the bilateral gender sub-commission, we started working on feminism inside the ranks of the FARC-EP: we held workshops, meetings, study groups on feminism, we invited feminists from Colombia and Latin America for them to illustrate us on the topic. At some point, we traveled to our camps in Colombia to talk to our people about the agreements that had been made in Havana, and specifically about the topic of gender equality. The topic became trending in our camps; discussions on gender equality (and especially, the lack of gender equality) inside and outside the FARC were every day’s bread. But also after the signing of the agreements, we continued to organize workshops on feminism and gender in the temporary camps that were set up for the decommissioning of weapons.

In Havana, we set up three meetings with representatives from women’s organizations from Colombia, and we had a two-days meeting with female ex-fighters from all over the world, to hear them out about the difficulties, the contexts and the specific temporary measures needed for women in their reintegration process. Women from South Africa, Northern Ireland, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and also Colombia came together to elaborate on these topics, to talk about how society still sees female fighters differently than male fighters. Although female fighters were an example for many young Colombian women on the countryside, in a traditionally catholic society, female fighters are sort of the devil itself, whose biggest sin is carrying a weapon while she should be procreating, raising ten children and cooking dinner. This was something we had in common with many fighters from other parts of the world. We spoke about the difficulties for female fighters to access land after the signing of the peace agreement, to reintegrate their communities where there is a lot of pressure to take up the traditional roles as moms, housewives and “caring” partners.

All this work helped to create an excellent peace agreement with hundreds of provisions on gender inclusion. But a peace agreement is a piece of paper. What matters is the implementation, and in this sense, the results have been highly disappointing, to say the least; not only in terms of women’s rights, but also in general terms. There is no space here to elaborate on the implementation, but it might be sufficient to say that since the signing of the agreement in 2016, around 500 ex-fighters have been killed.

There are many lessons to be learned from this process, but maybe the most important general lesson is the following: even deep institutional and legal transformations – if achieved by the implementation of a peace agreement – aren’t enough to reach a society totally free of gender discrimination, machismo and sexism. We have to seek the historical roots of these illnesses in the history of society and its class division and exploitation; therefore, the elimination of the different types of violence requires something more than just constitutional, legal or institutional changes. It requires true revolutionary changes that dismantle the basis of exploitation and social exclusion of all human beings.