A Short History of PBI in Colombia

The Petition

In 1992, the PBI International office received a request for the formation of a team in Colombia. It was signed by P. Javier Giraldo one of the most prestigious human rights defenders and then director of the Inter-Congregational Justice and Peace Commission. Around the same time, various people, who were involved with PBI, met Colombian human rights defenders travelling around Europe who, on the return to their home country, were assassinated. 

Arrival

On 3 October 1994, the first PBI Colombia team members arrived in Bogotá.

The process had actually begun a year earlier with a two-month-long visit of an exploratory PBI team to Colombia (May/June 1993), which concluded with a report giving the green light to the viability of international observers and accompaniment in the country. Following this report a Project Committee was formed and, in July 1994, the Project Coordination Office began work in London.

After its arrival, the PBI Team installed itself almost simultaneously in Bogotá and Barrancabermeja. Within a few weeks, the Colombian Government granted ‘courtesy visas’ with the aim of facilitating the team’s stay during the initial stages of obtaining legal status in Colombia.

The difficult situation in Colombia did not let up for the installation of the team; its work of international accompaniment began from the onset. By November, threats against the Association of Families of the Detained-Disappeared (ASFADDES) had intensified. It was significant that, since receiving PBI accompaniment, ASFADDES withdrew the request it had made many months earlier to the Presidential Department of Human Rights for protection by armed guards (without ever receiving such protection). Something similar happened months later, when PBI began to accompany the Regional Corporation for the Defence of Human Rights (CREDHOS) in Barrancabermeja; the President of the organisation, Osiris Bayter, informed the Administrative Department of Security (DAS) that, in spite of the threats they had received, she would rather do without the armed guards, as their presence would interfere with her work and went against her ideology of non-violence.

While accompaniment work extended from these two to more organisations, the intense work of dialogue with the Colombian Government, state security forces, churches and different NGOs were initiated to present the Project, to open channels of communication with the authorities and to create a safe work space for PBI Colombia. Meanwhile, the London office, the Project Committee and PBI National Groups did the same with agencies, NGOs and governmental authorities in several countries. All of this, along with the immediate production and distribution of information, marked the rapid development of the Colombian Project which, within only a few years, consolidated and began to expand.

Expansion centred on forced displacement

Having seen that forced displacement was one of the most worrying aspects of the conflict in Colombia, PBI Colombia decided to expand its work to the Uraba area and carried out exploration to the region in November 1997. As a result of this exploration, it gave the go-ahead to PBI’s permanent presence in Urabá. In July 1998, it established a headquarters in Turbo with five volunteers; making a total of fourteen international observers in Colombia. It accompanied communities in Cacarica provisionally based in Turbo (Albergue and Coliseo), Bocas Del Atrato, Cupica Bay and the Peace Community San Jose de Apartadó. They also visited the Peace Community San Francisco de Asís and Dabeiba sporadically.

Medellín Team Installed

On 28 January 1999, Jairo Bedoya Carvajal, Olga Rodas Duque, Jorge Salazar and Claudia Tamayo, all members of the Popular Insitute of Training (IPC), were kidnapped by the United Self Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC) while they were working in the Medellín office. Soon afterwards, on 30 January, Everado de Jesus Puerta and Julio Ernesto Gonzalez of the Foundation Committee of Solidarity with Political Prisoners (FCSPP) were taken from the bus they were travelling on from Medellin to Bogotá and assassinated. These events motivated PBI to accelerate the decision to establish a team in the city and in October 1999 the first Medellin Team of six volunteers was installed.

By the end of 1999, PBI Colombia had a total of 30 volunteers.

Recent History

In 2004, PBI celebrated the tenth anniversary of its stay in Colombia. The commemorative event was attended by the UN Special Representative on Human Rights Defenders, Hina Jilani, and other important figures from the international stage along with human rights defenders from Colombia.

Over the years, PBI Colombia has remained permanently in four of the country’s regions while also covering many more zones such as Cauca and Valle de Cauca, Arauca, Catatumbo, the Atlantic Coast, South Bolivar and East Antioqueño among others.

In 2006, at the request of the Inter-Ecclesiastical Commission of Justice and Peace, PBI began to accompany members in their work supporting displaced compatriots from the Curbaradó basin, Atrato Medio. These displaced peoples were building a new humanitarian zone on the land of Don Enrique Petro, in an area which had suffered the presence of armed groups for more than ten years. Despite this land being under the protection of Law 70 (1993) as ancestral land of Afro-Colombians, until April this year, it was covered with African palm cultivated by an unauthorised third party. Nevertheless, through persistence, the displaced managed to create a humanitarian zone on part of it. The PBI Colombia project now has 32 volunteers on the ground and a support team based in Bogotá, Brussels and Washington.