Understanding Threats against Afro-Descendant Women Human Rights Defenders: Re-Envisioning Security

Colombia has the highest rate of assassinations of human rights defenders in Latin America, and women defending Afro-descendant and Indigenous territories are particularly at risk. Threatened Afro-descendant women defenders observe that the wave of violence against them, including femicide and rape, is designed to silence them, control their territories, and intimidate their communities. They can be at risk in all spaces of their lives, not only for defending their territories but also for stepping out of stereotypical gender roles. When asked what would ensure better safety, many Afro-Colombian women human rights defenders assert that protection must start with the Government respecting their collective territorial rights as recognized under Colombian law. The problems they identify speak not only to an ineffective state response to threats, but also to a misdiagnosis of the dangers that they face to begin with. In that context, this article details the post-Peace Accord risks and dangers that Afro-Colombian women human rights defenders and their communities face, the historical context for that risk, and the deficiencies they identify in the Government’s approach to threats against them. While the Government can point to programming intended to meet its constitutional requirement to protect human rights defenders, its approach frames human rights defenders as individual subjects distinct from their political context and the threats to their lives as an anomaly. Having diagnosed threats to Afro-descendant women human rights defenders as exceptional, non-political, and individualized, as opposed to common, political, and directed against them as members of collectives, the state approach suppresses self-protection models that could draw on and strengthen communities’ internal knowledge, abilities, and autonomy. Through an analysis of the state’s misdiagnosis and inadequate response, the article encourages international and local human rights advocates to keep collective territorial rights and a gender focus at the center of efforts to protect Afro-descendant women human rights defenders.