Summary

There are currently around four million people in Colombia who have been driven from their homes by the horrific abuses and violence associated with the country’s nearly five-decade-long internal armed conflict. For many, the suffering does not end after they flee their homes. Thrown into new lives in unfamiliar cities, with few resources and little support, they live in shoddy housing in dangerous neighborhoods, face high unemployment and limited state services, and confront the continued threat of violence by armed groups, sometimes the very same groups from which they fled.  

These hardships are all too often compounded by another very serious human rights problem: gender-based violence. Every hour there are an average of nine new acts of sexual violence against women and girls in Colombia. Thirty-seven percent of Colombian women—according to a 2010 state-sponsored survey—report suffering violence at the hands of their intimate partners. For displaced women and girls, available evidence strongly suggests that the prevalence of these and other forms of gender-based violence is even higher: up to almost one in two displaced women, according to one survey conducted by USAID and Profamilia. As the country’s Constitutional Court concluded, patterns of violence and discrimination within Colombian society are “exacerbated and worsened by [displacement], impacting displaced women most acutely.” 

In recent years, Colombia has made important progress in constructing a legal and policy framework to protect women and girls from gender-based violence and to promote the rights to health and justice for survivors. In 2008, the Congress passed some of the most comprehensive legislation on violence against women in the region, although some small gaps in legal protections remain. The same year, the Constitutional Court ordered various ministries to address gender-based violence against displaced women and girls. In 2011, the government issued regulations to implement the laws and court orders, and developed a comprehensive “referral pathway” to ensure that service providers can guide victims of gender-based violence to all of the services available in the government’s integrated, multi-sector response to the problem—including health services, justice, protection, and psycho-social support.

To find out if this legal framework and pathway has made a difference for displaced victims of gender-based violence, Human Rights Watch conducted fieldwork in four major cities in Colombia, interviewing 80 displaced women and girls, nearly all of whom had been victims of gender-based violence: ranging from individual and gang rape by members of armed groups to violence and rape by spouses or intimate partners. We also interviewed 46 government officials and health care practitioners, 65 rights advocates, service providers, and other civil society representatives who have worked extensively with victims.

Our research revealed that the legal framework and referral pathway, when properly applied, can be effective, with government officials helping displaced victims of gender-based violence to access justice and health services. But in the cases reviewed by Human Rights Watch, far more often than not, the framework and pathway are not properly applied, the victims do not receive the medical attention they are entitled to, and the perpetrators are not brought to justice.  

Obstacles to Medical Attention

Access to timely and quality health services is essential after sexual or domestic violence, both for the wellbeing of the victims and for the collection of forensic evidence necessary to bring perpetrators to justice. Yet displaced victims of gender-based violence in Colombia typically have practical access to neither.

Human Rights Watch’s interviews with women, health providers, advocates, and officials revealed a daunting array of obstacles to medical services for victims. These include the failure of health facilities to properly implement the relevant laws and policies, resulting in inadequate screening for signs of gender-based violence, mistreatment of victims, and arbitrary denial or delays in providing essential services. In some cases, rape victims said they were able to secure doctors’ appointments only well past when time-bound treatments to prevent pregnancy or HIV infection would be effective. In others, forensic testing occurred so late that no physical evidence of the crimes remained.

Another major obstacle is a widespread lack of knowledge regarding the requisite medical services, both among the women and girls who are entitled to them and, worse yet, among the health officials and practitioners responsible for providing them. It is precisely this lack of knowledge among victims of gender-based violence that the “referral pathway” was designed to overcome. Yet the lack of knowledge among officials and practitioners prevents the pathway from functioning as it should. The failure to provide health workers with proper training on handling cases of gender-based violence—as mandated by law—results in them failing to provide victims with the referrals they need.  

For many displaced women and girls, these obstacles of poor service and lack of information are compounded by the precarious circumstances in which they live. Compared to the general population, they often have less familiarity with the health institutions and service providers in the places where they have settled, less money to cover transportation costs, and greater fear of retribution from their victimizers if they seek care.

Obstacles to Justice

Our interviews also revealed a wide range of obstacles displaced women and girls face when seeking justice after gender-based violence, including mistreatment by authorities, evidentiary challenges, and fear of retribution.

Displaced women and girls reported to Human Rights Watch that police and prosecutors failed to take their cases seriously. Dolores G., for instance, told a prosecutor that when her husband (who had abused her for years) threatened to hit her son, she told him to hit her instead, which he did. The prosecutor retorted, “You said, ‘Hit me,’ and he did. What do you want me to do?” He took no action on the case. Another woman said investigators seemed to doubt her friend’s report of rape, saying, “But she doesn’t have that good of a body.”

Others reported being told that there could be no criminal prosecution of their cases unless they could produce physical evidence of the abuse, which in some instances was impossible due to delays in accessing forensic testing. While Colombian law does in fact allow criminal investigations to be opened on the basis of non-physical evidence, justice officials and rights advocates who work with victims of gender-based violence reported that prosecutors commonly decline to pursue such cases, a practice which leads women and girls to give up on justice.

Shortcomings in Humanitarian Assistance and Protection Measures

The Colombian government has established humanitarian assistance measures for displaced families and has innovative protection measures for victims of gender-based violence and for human rights leaders. These programs offer essential—even lifesaving—support for the displaced, for victims of violence, and for individuals at risk of violence. Yet displaced women, as well as rights advocates and service providers, identified shortcomings in their implementation that warrant attention. 

With respect to humanitarian assistance, the Colombian government provides displaced families with food, housing, and other benefits. To apply, families must register as a single unit under the name of a primary registrant, who then effectively controls the family’s access to the benefits. When the husband is the primary registrant, as is often the case, victims of domestic violence may believe that they have to choose between staying in abusive households and losing crucial benefits. Dulcea A., for example, said she put up with her husband’s beatings after they were displaced, but left him when he raped her daughter. As a result, she lost housing, food aid, and other assistance.

While women can attempt to change their registration after leaving abusive husbands, victims of gender-based violence who attempted to do so told Human Rights Watch that the process was slow, and sometimes never completed.

Protection measures for victims of gender-based violence are available under several laws. Victims can start the process of procuring orders for protection measures through several government offices, including municipal officers, family commissioners, courts, or prosecutors. Unfortunately the system does not always operate effectively.

Since 1997, Colombia also has had a specialized unit within the Ministry of the Interior tasked with protecting human rights defenders and other at-risk individuals. The program is the most advanced of its kind in the region. After years of problems and critiques, this protection unit instituted sweeping reforms in 2011. But several women leaders told Human Rights Watch that the system still has problems. A common complaint by women leaders is that the program does not cover their families, although Human Rights Watch hopes that regulations issued in May 2012 will begin to remedy this particular concern.

Illustrative Cases

• Lucia M., 37, fled her small, rural community in Antioquia with her husband and six children when an armed group threatened her son for refusing to join their ranks in 2010. Her husband had mistreated her before: he was violent and two of her pregnancies resulted from forced sex. The violence became worse after the family fled to Medellín. Lucia reported the abuse to prosecutors, filing criminal charges. Lucia hid with her six children in a temporary shelter, but when her time ran out, a child protection agency took her children until she could find housing and stable employment. Lucia tried to change her displacement registration with government authorities to reflect her separation from her husband so that she could directly access humanitarian assistance for herself and her children. The agency never responded. Lucia and her children are receiving no benefits. Lucia’s husband continues to threaten her and she has lost hope that the government can help her. She told Human Rights Watch that she wonders if it would have been better to have stayed with her husband, even if he hurt her.
• Monica N., 28, has been displaced seven times. Armed groups killed her uncles, her brother and her mother were disappeared, and guerrilla groups recruited her cousins as young as 11 years of age. By 2008, she had become a leader in her community in Cartagena, and began receiving threats to stop her leadership work. “I would leave my house, and people would be waiting for me,” she told Human Rights Watch. In 2009, alleged armed groups killed her partner. Monica fled to Bogotá, and sent her oldest child to Chocó for safety. In 2011 an unknown attacker raped Monica in Bogotá, she believes as punishment for her leadership activities. She immediately reported the rape to authorities. The government forensic medical institute would not see her for 10 full days, well beyond when physical evidence was likely to remain. No official referred Monica for health treatment during the period when she could have gotten prophylaxis to prevent pregnancy or sexually transmitted infections, including HIV. When Monica finally did access health treatment, a doctor prescribed medicines for a fungal vaginal infection from the rape and to belatedly attempt to avoid HIV infection. The medicines were expensive, and Monica could only afford the one for the fungal infection. There is no progress in her criminal case.
• Mercedes D., 44, lived in a rural community where, in 1997, guerrilla groups tried to recruit her husband. Afraid, the family fled and did not report the incident or their displacement. In 2004, paramilitaries killed her husband believing him to be a guerrilla sympathizer. During this same period, Mercedes’s 16-year-old daughter, Beatriz, was raped. Mercedes fled with her children to Medellín. Her daughter became pregnant, and bore a child from the rape. Mercedes was not trained for urban employment, so she worked in the outskirts of the city on a farm. In late 2009, on her way to work, someone she identified as a member of a paramilitary group raped her. Mercedes did not seek medical treatment or go to the police after the rape. Four months later Mercedes realized she was pregnant. Concerned about how she would continue to work and feed her children, and a new baby, she went to the municipal human rights ombudsman, who directed her to a shelter for victims of gender-based violence. The shelter program helped her regain economic and social stability. Then in 2011, Beatriz was shot dead by crossfire in a neighborhood shootout. There is an ongoing investigation, but Mercedes does not know the status. Her two youngest children were taken from her and placed in an institution until she finds a job. “I am afraid all of the time, in every moment,” she told Human Rights Watch.
• Maria Claudia M., 42, was displaced to Cartagena by violence. She has two children, a daughter and a son. For six years she was in a relationship with a demobilized member of a paramilitary group who verbally abused her, but she never reported the abuse. In July 2011 he raped her then-13-year-old daughter; he was not her daughter’s father. She tried to stop him. She says that when she caught him, he pushed her against a wall with a machete to her throat and threatened her not to tell anyone, saying, “Do anything, and I will kill you.” Maria Claudia immediately took her daughter to report the crime and receive medical treatment. Both her daughter and younger son were placed in a child welfare institution for a month for psycho-social services. Maria Claudia did not receive any such services. Her ex-partner fled Cartagena, but continued to have powerful connections in her neighborhood because of his former affiliation with a paramilitary group. Maria Claudia’s children were released back to her, but she says that authorities did not provide any further protection measures to prevent retaliation for reporting the crime. She had made her security concerns clear to the prosecutor in her daughter’s case, but says that the prosecutor did not inform her of any potential protection measures, including providing safer locks for her house or a cellular phone with direct line to police. Maria Claudia told Human Rights Watch that she was afraid for her and her children’s safety. “It makes me afraid that he is free,” she said. “He is an aggressive, dangerous man. He has links to paramilitaries.” Two months after speaking with Human Rights Watch, her ex-partner returned, threatening Maria Claudia, her children, and the women who have helped them.
• Dolores G., 38, was displaced to Cartagena with her husband and two children in 2002. Within a year, her husband began beating her severely. After he began also threatening her son, she reported the abuse to the police, who referred her to a prosecutor. Rather than investigating her complaints, the prosecutor blamed her for her situation, saying, “You said, ‘Hit me,’ and he did. What do you want me to do?” Dolores fled home and for 3 months went into hiding, as her husband tried to hunt her down, carrying a machete as he went through the neighborhood. When he found her at a friend’s house one night, he grabbed her by the throat, held her down at knifepoint, and raped her. After her previous experience with the police and prosecutor, she felt she could not find help there. She turned instead to the Acción Social (a predecessor to the current Department for Social Prosperity), the agency in charge of humanitarian affairs for displaced persons. “I need a solution to my problem,” she told them, “this man will kill me and nothing will happen.” In June 2004, Acción Social gave Dolores money to relocate with her children back to her hometown. For eight months, she lived in peace at her parents’ home with her children, until she received threats from two armed men who gave her 24 hours to leave the town. Once again she fled to Cartagena and—feeling she had nowhere else to go with her children—moved back in with her husband. He soon took to abusing her as before, but she did not bother seeking help from the government again, and instead endured for another six years. Over the span of the abuse, Dolores saw doctors and other health professionals, sometimes for injuries associated with the abuse. She was not screened for abuse, nor referred to any additional services for victims of domestic violence.  Only in 2011 did she finally manage successfully to leave the abusive relationship.

Action Needed

The Colombian government should take the following steps in order to protect the human rights of displaced victims of gender-based violence:

• Establish an independent commission to conduct a rigorous review of current practices in the institutions that directly provide care or services to  displaced victims of gender-based violence to address ineffective implementation of the existing legal and policy framework;
• Collect accurate data regarding the scope of gender-based violence related to the conflict and displacement to better understand the current context of violence suffered by displaced women and girls and to provide baseline data for monitoring the impact of policies and adjusting them over time to better serve this population;
• Expand, strengthen, and ensure continuity of training programs for health and justice system employees and carry out public awareness campaigns to familiarize displaced women and girls with their rights and the services available to them in an effort to address lack of knowledge regarding rights of displaced gender-based violence victims;
• Pass pending legislation on access to justice for victims of sexual violence to facilitate successful prosecution of perpetrators of gender-based violence crimes.

Many of the obstacles displaced women and girls face in accessing health services, justice, and protection after gender-based violence are not unique to displaced victims. These recommendations will benefit victims across all sectors of society. Nevertheless, displaced women and girls live in extreme vulnerability, and the government response must take into account their specific needs. This may require taking additional proactive steps to overcome the historical lack of trust in government institutions, severe social and economic marginalization, and the continuing security concerns of displaced women and girls.

Failure to fill the gap between the government’s progressive laws and policies and the difficult realities victims confront when they seek help will perpetuate impunity for abuses against displaced women and girls, and continue to impede their access to essential medical attention. Fear and desperation will remain a part of everyday life for thousands of displaced women and girls. “All that has happened to me is difficult, but what’s worse is the fear that remains with me,” Angela D., a rape survivor, told Human Rights Watch. “It’s a malignancy…. Ever since I left my beautiful little village, I have not found a tranquil place to rest.”