PBI-Colombia accompanies Nydia Erika Bautista Foundation as it honours Yanette Bautista, launches network and campaign on Law 2364

Published by Brent Patterson on October 28, 2025 October 28, 2025

The Peace Brigades International-Colombia Project has posted on social media:

“We accompany @fundacionnydiaerikabautista [the Nydia Erika Bautista Foundation – FNEB] on National Women Searchers Day, in an act of recognition for those who have contributed tirelessly to uncovering the truth in Colombia.

We celebrate the strength of sisterhood among women who have transformed pain into the vindication of rights, promoting the creation of #Law2364, which recognizes and protects their search work from gender, intersectional, anti-racist, spiritual, and ancestral perspectives.

We also honor the creation of the National Network of Women Searchers, ‘Legacy of Yanette Bautista,’ a symbol of unity, resistance, and memory.

From PBI Colombia, we reiterate our support for FNEB to strengthen protective environments, support the implementation of #Law2364, and continue contributing to justice, truth, and peacebuilding.”

The Nydia Erika Bautista Foundation has also posted:

“In the framework of the National Day of Recognizing Women Searchers, we participate in various days of recognition and commemoration where we reaffirm our fight for the truth of our missing loved ones and our commitment to the legacy of our founder Yanette Bautista

In the event ‘Searching for Truth and Weaving Justice for Our Missing Loved Ones’ of the [human rights defender] Yanette Bautista was paid tribute with the installation of a plaque in her memory and the naming of the main auditorium of the Cundinamarca Headquarters after her.

During the day we visited our exhibition ‘The search has a woman’s face’, installed in the People’s Defender, a sample that collects the faces and stories of women searchers

Launch of the National Network of Searching Women. We realized one of our founder’s deepest dreams: to form a network to strengthen the legal, political and social framework for the protection and assurance of women seekers’ rights, in honor of her legacy.

In the act of recognition of the National Search System, we pay tribute to Yanette Bautista and women searchers. In this space we also launch the campaign ‘Until the Law of Searching Women is implemented’, a call to the State to fulfill its duty in the implementation of the Law 2364 of Searching Women

At the @unaloficial [National University of Colombia in Bogotá] we held an artistic day and a collective mural, where we portray and pay tribute to Yanette Bautista, as a way to reaffirm that she continues to walk with us, as the mother of the seekers, a symbol of love, stubbornness and resistance.

We are deeply grateful to all the women seekers, the Community of Hope, allied organizations, entities, cooperatives, artists and collectives who joined these days of remembrance and recognition.

Special thanks to @fndh_es [Norwegian Fund for Human Rights], @onuderechoshumanoscolombia [United Nations Human Rights in Colombia] @pbicolombia [PBI-Colombia] @amnistiaamericas [Amnesty International]

Every gesture reminds us that we are not alone, that the search is collective and that we keep walking together.

Until no woman has to search alone!”

Seeking full implementation of the legislation

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.

In March 2025, Blu Radio reported: “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. …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 [Bautista].”

On June 18, 2025, Amnesty International posted: “A year ago, the Colombian government passed Law 2364 of 2024, which recognizes and provides for the integral protection of the work and rights of women searchers for victims of enforced disappearance. The Congress of the Republic debated and approved this law following the advocacy initiative of organizations of women searchers throughout the country. Amnesty International joined the Nydia Erika Bautista Foundation and the many other organizations of women searchers for forcibly disappeared persons in Colombia to demand that the law be implemented and the promise of state protection for the women who dedicate their lives to searching for their loved ones in the midst of violence be upheld.”

We continue to follow this.

Accompaniment

Peace Brigades International has been accompanying the “Nydia Erika Bautista” Foundation (FNEB) occasionally since 2007 and in full since 2016.

Further reading: PBI-Colombia accompanies the Nydia Erika Bautista Foundation as implementation of Women Searchers Law faces delays (PBI-Canada, March 23, 2025).