PBI-Colombia accompanies Nydia Erika Bautista Foundation at IACHR hearing in Los Angeles on forced disappearances

On March 7, PBI-Colombia tweeted:

“We accompany @nydia_erika [the Nydia Erika Bautista Foundation] to the IACHR [Inter-American Commission on Human Rights] #Hearing on right to information for family members of victims of #ForcedDisappearance

Yanette Bautista: “States must comply with #Truth and information to search for loved ones, including girls and women victims of #SexualViolence”.”

On Instagram, PBI-Colombia further noted:

“#Today we accompanied the @fundacionnydiaerikabautista during the #PublicAudience of the @cidh_iachr on the right to information from intelligence archives at the request of family members of victims of #ForcedDisappearance in Colombia, Guatemala and El Salvador.

Yanette Bautista, director of the @fundacionnydiaerikabautista:

“This hearing is a historic milestone for relatives of the disappeared. States must comply with #Truth and information to search for loved ones, among which are girls and women victims #SexualViolence”.

A day before #8M [International Women’s Day] the @cidh_iachr makes key commitment on declassification of files containing information on state responsibility in enforced disappearances and sexual violence.”

For additional quotes and video clips from the IACHR hearing, please see the Nydia Erika Twitter account here.

“For us it is important that @CIDH address the states of #Colombia, #Guatemala and #Salvador to speed up the procedures for declassification and opening of the intelligence files related to forced disappearances so that they contribute to give light”

PBI-Colombia has accompanied the Nydia Erika Bautista Foundation occasionally from 2007 and in full since 2016.

The Foundation was created in 1997 while the Bautista family was living in exile in Germany. It has placed the problem of the enforced disappearance of more than eighty thousand people as a result of the armed conflict on the national agenda and has promoted national legislation on the subject. It was named after Nydia Erika, Yanette’s 32-year-old sister, who was disappeared on August 30, 1987. There are indications that she suffered torture and sexual violence during her captivity before being executed.