Women, war and peace. A gender perspective of the Colombian peace process.

Abstract

For a long time, international security studies have centered their focus on a male perspective, avoiding taking into account the role women play in this context. it is only in recent years that the topic has begun to take on relevance. With the acquisition of full citizenship, women have slowly begun to demand rights from which they were historically excluded, finally doing justice to all the abuses they have been victims of. This is how the constitutions began to formally enshrine the rights of women, while historiography started to include the active participation of women in the events that determine the development of society. Colombia is not exempt from this process: the immense efforts that feminist organizations have made to ensure fairer participation of women in peace negotiations have ensured that the Havana Peace Agreement is still a cutting-edge model for gender perspective, and constantly published reports on the role women have played during the nearly sixty years of armed conflict, as well as on the differentiated effects the war has had on Colombian women, are innumerable. However, while on the one hand we are witnessing the proliferation of discourses on the importance of including a gender perspective in all policies dealing with the resolution of the armed conflict, on the other hand we go against the risk of placing women victim role, minimizing their capacity for action and resistance. It is therefore important to offer representations that go beyond the binomial woman-passivity, avoiding images of -subordination that too often justify the violence exercised against the female gender. This thesis will tackle the implementation of the peace process in Colombia, focusing in particular on how the gender perspective has been included and implemented in the final agreements. The thesis will consist of four chapters. The first chapter will deal with the inclusion of the gender perspective in public policies: it will start with a historical excursus of the implementation of a gender perspective in security-related issues, and it will then introduce the international, regional and national legal framework that is relevant for the analysis of the peace process. The second chapter will present the emergence and evolution of the conflict between the Colombian government and the FARCs, and it will analyze the role played by women in different aspects of the conflict, focusing in particular on two illegal armed groups, the FARCs and the paramilitary, presenting an analysis on how different conceptions over gender roles in these two groups led to a different structuring of the societies under their control. The third chapter will be centered on the signing of the Final Agreement signed in Havana, tackling the process that led women to be part of the negotiation team, and how the gender perspective has been included in each part of the agreements. Finally, the last chapter will offer an analysis of the implementation of the provisions of the Final Agreement, in particular the process of integrating the former female guerrillas into society. The chapter will be completed by some interviews with members of foundations that deal with women and security in Colombia.