Colombia Diversa UN intervention

Excellencies, Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield and colleagues, good afternoon,

today I will demonstrate that gender and sexuality are at the heart of the Security Council affairs, because there should be space for everybody at peacebuilding. I work at Colombia Diversa, the leading LGBT NGO in favor of LGBT people in Colombia. Due to our work we know why it is important to think about LGBT people when countries and societies talk about peace. The answer is simple: because a society that discriminates people because of their gender or sexual orientation is not a peaceful society.

My intervention will have two parts. I will begin explaining the  main reasons why States should build peace including LGBT people, and in  the second part I will tell you what you can learn from the Colombian  case.

First reason to make peace efforts with an LGBT approach: discrimination against these people is useful for all armed actors to advance war. When there is a previous social discourse about who is worthy of dignity and who is not, it creates a group of bodies available to be attacked. In Colombia Diversa we have documented that in order to ingratiate with society and, simultaneously, frighten it, armed actors deployed their violence on people considered "undesirable", which in many cases were LGBT people. Pachita, for example, was a trans woman who lovingly protected other LGBT people in her village, but when a new armed group arrived in that territory, they threatened to kill her and forced her to cut off all communication with others. Two months later she was killed, her body left in the public space, and the order was given that no one would go to her funeral. In this way, the armed group ingratiated itself with the community that  rejected the family that Pachita had created, and they also made it clear that they can control the movement, life and even the memory of people who stood in their way.

Second reason: the homophobic and transphobic discrimination that these armed actors use stems from the socially accepted idea of being a man and a woman.  This Council has led the creation of an agenda that recognizes the importance of gender in peacebuilding.  To target LGBT people is actually punishing them for being "bad men" or "bad women" who have disobeyed social norms. I invite the Council to revisit the discussions and findings on the Women, Peace and Security agenda with this understanding in mind.

Third reason: resolving war is incomplete if issues of gender and sexuality are left out. In Colombia Diversa we have documented that all armed actors committed the international crime of gender persecution against LGBT people, producing disproportionate effects on the victims. Today I want to highlight the collective damage of these events. Every time an armed actor attacks an LGBT person, they are sending a message to all of society: that these people are dispensable, that their citizenship is not important, that they will always be erased from the world. That message remains even when the armed actors have left and hostilities have stopped. These facts reinforce in everyday life the habit of discrimination, which impoverishes political discourse, damages peacebuilding efforts, and true social reconciliation.

For the second part of my speech I want to give examples that come from the case of Colombia, which has created the standard that other nations should follow: to include in the peace agreements a transversal gender approach along with specific measures and institutions on the subject. This combination has allowed the recommendations of the specialized groups to be heard and implemented and complex and comprehensive conversations on gender and sexuality in war to take place.

The Colombian example in the inclusion of LGBT people in peace negotiations should also be followed. This was the result of demands from feminist and LGBT civil society organizations that had been working together for decades. Their direct participation produced the explicit mention of a gender approach that includes LGBT people in the peace agreement, the instruments that develop it and implement it. The Security Council can promote this practice with governments that are currently advancing negotiated solutions to the conflict and continue to promote the implementation of this approach in Colombia.

On the other hand, countries that intend to create transitional justice systems can learn from the Colombian case, something we did not do: create an institutional design that adequately responds to the revictimizing silence of perpetrators about violence committed against LGBT people and women. In Colombia, the Special Jurisdicition for Peace has been interviewing those most responsible for the  armed conflict  for six years now, and in an incomprehensible way no one has acknowledged the violence committed against LGBT people or women (even though some did admit to this before the Truth Comission). This is terrifying, but not surprising. The story is sadly similar in other transitional justice processes around the world.

Finally, specific investigation and reparation of violence against women and LGBT people in the context of the armed conflict must be a reality, not just a promise. In Colombia, we are still waiting for the formal opening of macro-case 11 in the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, which will investigate all acts of gender-based violence committed in the context of the armed conflict. This macro case was announced in July 2022, but there has been no progress since that promise was made. These investigations are desirable and necessary, but they must materialize as a priority and effectively, not just promise. At this point I invite other countries to take up the idea of specific judicial investigations into acts of gender-based violence, but I call on the Colombian State, the Verification Mission and the Security Council to direct their efforts towards the effective opening of macro-case 11 and thus put an end to the long impunity and invisibility of our stories.

Excellencies, thank you for facilitating this conversation, which I hope will continue and produce concrete ways in which you can protect and care for LGBT people from the Security Council, such as explicitly asking about the effects that your decisions have on said population before enforcing them. If we act in solidarity and effectively, we will change the way we tell war and make peace. And LGBT people will be able to reach old age knowing that we made history, that we managed to make our pains and loves in the midst of war change the strategies of judging, repairing and preventing all armed conflicts in the world.