PBI-Colombia accompanies Nydia Erika Bautista Foundation at protest in front of the Search Unit for Missing Persons (UBPD) in Bogota

On August 29, PBI-Colombia tweeted:

“If there is no path, we create it”… We were accompanying @nydia_erika and relatives of victims of #Enforced Disappearance from different departments of Colombia to demand, in front of the @UBPDcolombia, truth and justice #WomenSeekers sowing dignity #untilfound

As can be seen in the poster below the protest in front of the UBPD began at 11:30 am.

At almost 4 pm that day, the Nydia Erika Bautista Foundation tweeted:

“We leave without an answer from the @UBPDcolombia about the search for our missing people, we continue to fight on the path to find them #LookForThemNow

And on the evening of the next day, August 30, the Foundation tweeted:

210,000 forcibly disappeared demand the challenge of a full, effective and inclusive participation policy for women seekers, which does not exist on the part of the @ubpdcolombia

Last week, El Espectador reported:

“Searchers of the disappeared fight for their work to be recognized by the law. Decades of activism by women seekers now translate into a bill that is halfway to passing. The initiative, which seeks to recognize, protect and disseminate the work of women looking for their relatives, is considered a law that, if given the green light, would be the first of its kind in the world.”

Law on women seekers

In June 2022, El Espectador also reported:

“The Nydia Erika Bautista Foundation and seven organizations of victims of forced disappearance from different regions of the country delivered a document to Father Francisco de Roux with 15 recommendations that they hope that entity will record in its final report.”

Along with the recommendation of declassifying military archives, it was also proposed to create a Law for the Protection of Women Seekers.

El Espectador explains:

“Comprehensive Law for the Protection of the Rights of Women and Family Seekers: The victims also demand that State policy include a law that recognizes their rights, their contribution to the truth and the costs that their work has implied in their lives and in their physical, mental and family integrity. “A Comprehensive Law that dignifies their ethical and political role in society and the democratic rule of law and as women caregivers heads of family to whom the State has de facto delegated the search for the disappeared,” the document says. Protect the rights of missing women and searchers who have been victims of sexual violence so that they can access truth and justice. The document argues that there is a “total absence of criminal and disciplinary investigation of gender violations – including sexual violence – suffered by disappeared women and perpetrated against women searchers, under the armed conflict.””

The bill was submitted in Congress on October 19, 2022.

Accompaniment

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