PBI-Colombia accompanies the Nydia Erika Bautista Foundation as implementation of Women Searchers Law faces delays
Yanette Bautista: “As a collective, we want to turn our pain into rights. That is why we drafted a bill, to empower women who are searching for victims of enforced disappearance and to promote the rights of those women. The law came into force in 2024. However, our next task is to ensure that it is implemented and realized.”
PBI-Colombia has posted on social media: “In a meeting hosted by the @Norwegian Embassy in COL, and with the presence of @MinjusticiaCo, other embassies, and @PBIColombia, the @nydia_erika Foundation and Mothers for Life, shared the urgency of implementing the #Searchers Law, in dialogue with the same women searchers and builders of #Peace, who continue to face very serious violence, including sexual violence, in the search for their loved ones who have been forcibly disappeared. The accompaniment of the international community is key! @ONUHumanRights @ONUMujeresCol @PnudColombia @SwedeninCOL @EmbAlemaniaCOL @EUinColombia @GBertrand_UE @MinInterior”
The “Nydia Erika Bautista” Foundation (FNEB) has also posted on social media:
“FNEB and Mothers for Life with the Norwegian Ambassador, Minister of Justice, UN Women, Embassies of the European Union, Sweden, Switzerland, Ireland, Chile, the Netherlands, OHCHR, Amnesty International and PBI in a follow-up meeting on the implementation of the Women’s Searchers Rights Law received broad support as builders of territorial peace.
‘The struggle does not stop with the law’ said the Norwegian Ambassador, who was followed by his peers celebrating the continuity of the UN International Support Group, the importance of the participation of the searchers under Resolution 1325 in the Total Peace dialogues and for a Humanitarian Agreement for the disappeared.
Concern about the risks faced by women in the search for the disappeared, the urgency of measures on impunity and the opportunity to include the issue in the National Plan of Action on Human Rights were issues of vital importance at the Meeting.”
Blu Radio reports: “Lawyer Yanette Bautista, director and founder of the Nydia Erika Bautista Foundation [explains that] the Law on the Protection of the Rights of Women Searchers, also known as Law 2364, represents a significant advance in the fight for justice and reparation for women who are searching for their missing loved ones.”
Bautista says: “[This law] arises from the reality of violence against women for 40 years, in which behaviors such as sexual violence, kidnapping, deprivation of liberty, extortion and others suffered by women in the search for the disappeared, particularly victims of forced disappearance, were not criminalized, investigated and punished.”
The Blu Radio article adds: “She stressed that women searchers face enormous risks when trying to find their disappeared, especially in territories dominated by armed groups and, therefore, the protection and support of the State ‘is essential in this process’.”
“Currently, [the law] is in a regulatory process that has presented several challenges. Although it was enacted in June 2024 and a deadline was set for its regulation, there are still articles that have not been implemented, according to the director [Bautista].”
Bautista further notes: “The law establishes that there will be a registry of women searchers so that they can have access to all the rights established by law, which are both civil and political rights, the right to life, liberty, integrity, as well as economic and social rights; access to housing, employment, everything that was never recognized for women.”
The full article is at ¿En qué va la ley de protección a mujeres buscadoras? Abogada Bautista habla de demoras (Blu Radio, March 19, 2025).
Video still from Blu Radio interview with Bautista.
The “Nydia Erika Bautista” Foundation (FNEB)
In 1982, then 27-year-old economist and sociologist Nydia Erika Bautista joined the 19th of April Movement (M-19), a social-democratic urban guerrilla movement that combined armed struggle with social work. The current president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, was also a member of M-19 at that time.
On August 30, 1987, Bautista was disappeared near their family home in Bogota in a joint operation of Brigades III and XX of the National Army. This took place at the time of the first communion of her 12-year-old son Erik Arellana and her 10-year-old niece Andrea Torres, who witnessed the abduction.
It is now known that Nydia Erika was held for two days, subjected to torture and sexual violence, and then take to the municipality of Guayabetal, about 90 kilometres south of Bogota, where she was reportedly killed with a single shot to her head.
On September 12, 1987, her body was found on the Bogotá- Villavicencio highway in a state of decomposition that made identification impossible.
On July 26, 1990, authorities exhumed her body.
Yanette Bautista was 27-years-old when her older sister Nydia Erika was disappeared. Yanette has shared: “I found my sister three years after she was taken away and disappeared. I knew it was her. She was wearing the same clothes she had on the day she disappeared.”
The Bautista family had to leave Colombia in 1997 due to threats against them. The “Nydia Erika Bautista” Foundation (FNEB) was established in 1999 while in exile in Germany.
Yanette has commented: “Our collective, Fundación Nydia Erika Bautista, is designed for women to help each other. There are no hierarchies. It is an exchange of knowledge. We provide legal support, document stories, and do advocacy. We have a leadership school to empower women seekers in different parts of the country. Our collective is mainly made up of women; Our research has revealed that 95% of those searching for loved ones are women, mothers, sisters, and wives.”
Yanette returned to Colombia in 2007.
In September 2014, senator and former president Álvaro Uribe Vélez falsely accused Yanette Bautista of being part of the National Liberation Army (ELN). At one point, the Capital Block of the Black Eagles (Águilas Negras) also declared the FNEB a military target.
In January 2015, Andrea Torres Bautista, who saw her aunt forcibly disappeared and who is now the legal coordinator for Nydia Erika Bautista Foundation, said: “[The accompaniment of] my mother Yanette Bautista by Peace Brigades International [has been] much more effective than even the bodyguards provided by the Colombian State, for them to see you alongside us, accompanying us, and all the systems like the office daily rounds, the visits, we think that it provides a lot for us to keep doing our work.”
Photo: Andrea Torres Bautista.
Photo: Nydia Erika’s son Erik in 2017 on the 30th anniversary of his mother’s disappearance.
Yanette’s fight for justice has included advocating for a Comprehensive Law for the Protection of the Rights of Women Searchers.
Photo: October 19, 2022, the day the Bill was filed.
On April 4, 2024, Bill No. 242 was approved in the Senate.
Then on June 18, 2024, Law 2364 of 2024, the Comprehensive Law for the Protection of the Rights of Women Searchers, was ratified by President Gustavo Petro.
Peace Brigades International has been accompanying the “Nydia Erika Bautista” Foundation (FNEB) occasionally since 2007 and in full since 2016.
Video: Yannette Bautista: “When the colleagues of the CINEP [the Center for Research and Popular Education] were killed we got out of the church and the PBI people were beside us. We bent down and we were crying and when we saw them crying we understood the pain had gone through all borders.”
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