Video still: Berenice Celeita, the president of Nomadesc, holds a tear gas canister during a PBI-Canada webinar on police violence against National Strike participants in Colombia, June 3, 2021. Three weeks earlier, the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) had stated: “The Colombian government has responded with excessive force in the deployment of the military and police with the widespread use of live firearms, rubber bullets and tear gas against protesters.”
The Peace Brigades International-Colombia Project has posted on social media:
“We extend our greeting and fraternal embrace to Nomadesc on their 25 years of work, @nomadescdh to organizations, communities, and collective processes of southwestern Colombia that fight for life, speaking out against violence and extractivism. #nomadesc #25thanniversary #colombia🇨🇴.”
PBI-Canada shares in this embrace of the work of the Association for Social Research and Action (Nomadesc).
Over just the past five years we recall a few key moments:
Berenice speaks on PBI-Canada webinar on police violence, June 2021
We also highlight just two of the times that Nomadesc has expressed solidarity with workers struggles in Canada:
– Nomadesc in Colombia expresses solidarity with CUPE and Air Canada flight attendants (PBI-Canada article, September 4, 2025)
– PBI-Colombia accompanied NOMADESC expresses solidarity with Unifor struggle in Saskatchewan (PBI-Canada article, June 24, 2020).
And we note that at the time of the National Strike the labour movement in Canada were clear in their solidarity: Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), Unifor, Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), United Steelworkers (USW), Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE), Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW), Union of Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), British Colombia General Employees Union (BCGEU) and Service Employees International Union (SEIU).
Photo: MAY 19, 2021: “PBI accompanied NOMADESC in Loma de la Cruz and Punto Resistencia in Cali in their work of monitoring and verifying violations of the human rights of protesters in the National Strike.”
And we note just a couple examples of their solidarity against war and genocide:
– PBI-Colombia accompanied Nomadesc demands an end to the genocide in Palestine (PBI-Canada article, August 30, 2025)
– Nomadesc message to CANSEC arms show in Canada “We Colombians do not want more weapons” (PBI-Canada article, June 2, 2022).
“We Colombians want no more weapons, no more massacres, no more disappearances, no more threats. No more fear. #StopTheGenocide. We demand truth, justice and guarantees that this will never happen again. Do not send us any more weapons. That makes you accomplices to barbarism. #Nomadesc #uip”
Accompaniment
Peace Brigades International has accompanied Nomadesc since 2011 and its president Berenice Celeita since 1999.
