PBI-Colombia accompanies Nydia Erika Bautista Foundation at presentation of 15 recommendations to the president of the Truth Commission

On May 30, the Norwegian Fund for Human Rights tweeted:

“We accompany @nydia_erika and victims of forced disappearance of #Colombia in a delivery of recommendations to the @ComisionVerdadC [the Truth Commission] report. One of the recommendations focused on the entity asking the @CConstitucional [Constitutional Court] to declare a state of affairs unconstitutional.”

The Nydia Erika Bautista Foundation also explained:

“Relatives of forcibly disappeared persons from Buenaventura, Meta, Guaviare, Bolívar, Bogotá, Valle, Putumayo with the Nydia Erika Bautista Foundation, Fundación Hasta Encontrarlos [Until Finding Foundation], Copsico [the Colombian Psychosocial Collective], deliver to @FranciscoDeRoux [the chair of the] @ComisionVerdadC [Truth Commission] the recommendations for final report.”

The 15 recommendations can be read here.

Among the recommendations:

– “Enforced disappearances must be eradicated from the country as a practice of State agents alone or with the participation of paramilitary groups, successors of paramilitarism or illegal armed groups that act with the tolerance, complicity, or cover-up of State agents.”

– Collective reparation for indigenous and Afro-descendant communities victims of enforced disappearance. According to the organizations, this victimizing act has been used as an instrument of terror, acculturation and land dispossession in strategic places such as Buenaventura and La Dorada (Bajo Putumayo).

The United Victims Registry (RUV), the government body in charge of registering war victims, has registered 150,000 forced disappearances between 1986 and 2017.

PBI-Colombia has previously explained:

“The ‘Nydia Erika Bautista’ Foundation for Human Rights (FNEB) is an organization of relatives of the victims of forced disappearance from five regions around the country (Bogota, Valle del Cauca, Meta, Casanare and Putumayo) and an interdisciplinary group of lawyers, social workers and experts in social archives and communication, who accompany people who have suffered the disappearance of one or several loved ones.”

Yanette Bautista has been fighting against forced disappearances in Colombia since the disappearance of her 32-year-old sister Nydia Erika on August 30, 1987. Members of the Battalion of Intelligence and Counterintelligence (BINCI) of the Colombian National Army have been named as responsible for the disappearance of Nydia Erika.

Peace Brigades has accompanied FNEB occasionally from 2007 and signed a full accompaniment agreement with them in 2016.