Author: Chema

The Commission for the Clarification of Truth, Coexistence and Non-Repetition of Colombia began its mandate in November 2018, intending to clarify the patterns and causes of human rights violations during the Colombian armed conflict, promoting the recognition of victims and contributing to coexistence. After more than three years of work, the Commission concludes this process in June 2022, presenting its Final Report and its subsequent dissemination, which will take place in July and August.

It has been an innovative mandate since, for the first time, a truth commission has included people living outside the country as participants. And ICIP has been a natural part of this process, acting as the Technical Secretariat of the Commission in Europe to accompany victims of the Colombian conflict in exile and promote their active participation.

In this capacity, ICIP has facilitated the creation of 15 working groups (nodes) in ten European countries, which have become spaces for participation, sharing experiences, and coexistence and dialogue among victims of the Colombian conflict living in Europe.

Additionally, several internodal groups have been created to address a range of thematic areas: gender, psychosocial support, recognition of victims, family members of victims of enforced disappearance, and second and third generations in exile.

Testimonies: Treasures of collective truth

For working with the Colombian exile community, 90 people were trained as interviewers and chroniclers, most of them victims and women, and a total of 822 testimonies were taken in Europe (2,000 worldwide).

This collection of testimonies has given visibility to life stories, silences, emotional impacts, coping, resilience and contributions to host societies and has also promoted transformative listening and self-recognition of the victims.

Recognition of the victims

Another aspect of ICIP’s work as Technical Secretariat of the Commission in Europe is the creation of spaces for the institutional recognition of exiled victims. The process, coordinated with the Catalonia Node in Support of the Commission and with the support of the Catalan Agency for Development Cooperation, includes promoting institutional proclamations and approving resolutions by municipal governments and social organisations.

Lleida became the first city in the world to approve a resolution recognising its Colombian exiled and migrant community. On 30 July 2021, the local city council recognised “the contributions of civil society organisations in Lleida towards a sustainable and lasting peace in Colombia and support of the migrant and exiled community.” Subsequent resolutions of recognition were approved in June 2022 in Sabadell and the Barcelona Municipal Council of International Cooperation.

Documentary: ‘Para volverte a ver‘

In this work area, ICIP, together with Mandorla Films, has produced the documentary Para volverte a ver, which narrates the contribution of the Colombian diaspora in Europe to the work of the Commission through four testimonies. The film will premiere in Lleida on 8 July, as part of the Cinemón film festival. It will also be screened in Barcelona at the presentation of the final report to be held at the Catalan Parliament on 12 July.

This short documentary was produced with the support of the Catalan Agency for Development Cooperation. More information about the film and its creation process can be found on the Facebook and Instagram accounts of Para volverte a ver.

ICIP, the Barcelona City Council and Taula per Mèxic are preparing the forum “Journalism and Peacebuilding in Mexico: Protecting journalists, guaranteeing freedom of the press,” which will be held in Mexico City on 20-21 June.

The event’s purpose is to reflect on the needs facing critical journalism in Mexico and create a meeting place for professionals exposed to constant risks and threats.

With eleven journalists murdered since the beginning of the year, Mexico is today one of the most dangerous countries to exercise freedom of the press, one of the fundamental pillars for building peace.

The starting point for the forum organization is the “Barcelona protects journalists from Mexico” temporary shelter program promoted by the Barcelona City Council and Taula de Mèxic. This program aims to facilitate staying in the Catalan capital of journalists who are threatened for freely practising their profession. That is why the conference will feature the participation of several journalists who are part of the program and will address the importance of protection mechanisms and psychosocial support for threatened professionals.

The “Journalism and Peacebuilding in Mexico” forum will be held at the Centro Cultural Bella Época and features the collaboration of various associations of Mexican journalists, such as Artículo 19, CIMAC and Periodistas de a Pie, as well as the Aluna Acompañamiento Psicosocial organization.

A peacebuilding perspective

Participants include prominent communication professionals who have long become essential actors in advocacy, social transformation and peacebuilding in a country, Mexico, where severe human rights violations occur. Their role is crucial in researching, documenting and analyzing the multiple instances of violence, identifying those responsible for these acts of violence, and raising awareness of citizen and community responses that challenge them and propose alternatives.

The forum will kick off on Monday, 20 June, with an institutional welcome by representatives of ICIP, the Barcelona City Council and Taula per Mèxic. Participants on the first day of the forum include the general director of the Mechanism for the Comprehensive Protection of Human Rights Defenders and Journalists of Mexico City, Tobyanne Ledesma Rivera and the representative in Mexico of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Guillermo Fernández-Maldonado. The keynote speaker will be Mexican journalist and documentary filmmaker Daniela Rea.

Several roundtables will be held on Monday 20 June and Tuesday 21 June with the participation of journalists from Mexico, as well as from Colombia, El Salvador and Catalonia. The issues that will be addressed include the current situation of critical journalism in Mexico, the challenges of investigative journalism in violent contexts, the contribution of journalism to peacebuilding, psychosocial support for journalists under threat, and the instruments of comprehensive protection for communication professionals at risk.

You can access the program of the forum (in Spanish) here. 

ICIP and the Commission for the Clarification of Truth, Coexistence and Non-Repetition of Colombia are preparing a documentary about the role of the diaspora of Colombian exiles in Europe.  The film, Para volverte a ver (To See You Again), is a production of Mandorla Films, an independent audiovisual company that specializes in documentaries.  The film will be released in July, a few weeks after the Truth Commission presents its final report on 28 June.  This documentary short has the support of the Catalan Agency for Development Cooperation.

The production of Para volverte a ver began at the beginning of 2022.  The idea of ICIP and the Commission was to portray the experience of several Colombians living in Europe who have given their testimony to the Commission from abroad, an innovative process that aims to inspire other truth commissions around the world.  According to Sílvia Plana, coordinator of ICIP’s Memory, coexistence and reconciliation area, the objective of the documentary is to show “the importance of the active participation of the diaspora in peacebuilding, as a transformative process both on a personal and collective level, based on the specific and unprecedented case of the Truth Commission of Colombia.”

After a public call for proposals, the production company Mandorla Films was chosen to carry out the project.  The production of the documentary began in February and filming took place in Denmark, Switzerland and Catalonia in March and April.  The film’s four main characters, Yanira Restrepo, Juana Sánchez, Wilmer Torres and Lizethe Álvarez, live in these countries.

The shooting of Para volverte a ver was completed during the meeting of nodes that ICIP organized in Barcelona in April.  The meeting was attended by commissioners Carlos Beristain and Lucía González, who also appear in the film.

Juana Sánchez, another one of the exiles featured in the documentary

The characters

Para volverte a ver compiles the testimonies of four Colombian exiles: Yanira, Juana, Wilmer and Lizethe.

Yanira is a farmer who lives in Catalonia.  She was forced to go into exile and leave Colombia 20 years ago after being persecuted by paramilitaries, guerrillas and the Colombian government.  She was a member of the M-19 guerrilla group.

Juana is a writer and amateur cook living in Barcelona.  Her father was the victim of a kidnapping by the FARC.  She has published a novel about her life story: her past and her experiences with her father.

Wilmer was born into a peasant family.  His grandfather was a peasant leader and his mother later followed in his footsteps to become a respected leader and human rights defender.  After years of persecution against her family, she decided to take Wilmer and his brother to Geneva, where she was a refugee.

Lizethe is a trans woman who fled Colombia after receiving several threats and realizing that her life was in danger.  After seeking asylum in several European countries, she found love and moved to Copenhagen, where she was able to start a new life.

A moment during the shooting of “Para volverte a ver” in Geneva, Switzerland

The production company

The production company behind this project is Mandorla Films, an audiovisual company headed by Nicolás Braguinsky Cascini and Juan Pablo Aris Escarena.

Braguinsky, a literature graduate and documentary filmmaker, is a creator of audiovisual content specializing in human rights, who has worked for various agencies of the United Nations, as well as for academic institutions such as York University and the University of Buenos Aires.  He has also worked for NGOs such as Civitas Maxima, CCPR, Wayamo Foundation and Geneva Call, among others.  Aris holds a PhD in social anthropology, and has extensive experience in ethnographic research in over ten countries and three continents.  The two of them have been working together since 2017 on projects that apply audiovisual techniques to scientific research and social projects.  Their productions include Solidarity Crime (2020) and Beyond Impunity (2021).

Para volverte a ver will premiere on 12 July at an event to be held at the Parliament of Catalonia during which the final report of the Truth Commission of Colombia will be presented.

For more information about the documentary and its creation process, you can follow the profiles of “Para volverte a ver” on Facebook and Instagram.

ICIP has presented a new monograph of the digital magazine Peace in Progress dedicated to violence in non-war settings. The publication coincides with the release of the new digital version of the magazine, a completely revamped platform with a new design that makes it easier to consult all the issues published so far. This latest issue, the number 40, is entitled Violence in non-war settings.

Over the past four years, ICIP has made an effort to focus on these high-intensity situations, which are not related to extremism or classical warfare. They are situations that do not necessarily occur in authoritarian regimes but happen in “failed states” or in the poorest of all, something devastating to millions of people around the world. It is violence linked to organised crime, human trafficking, violence against defenders of the land and the environment, violence against women, and migration crises. This kind of violence is often associated with Latin America, but it is a reality in many other parts of the world.

With the publication of this issue, ICIP wants to contribute to broadening the views and knowledge on these multiple dimensions of violence, making it visible and at the same time giving tools to the people and groups who work to deal with it. Ours is a peacebuilding look that seeks to understand this violence’s dynamics and to know its actors based on a multidimensional reading of the phenomenon.

The authors

The monograph consists of 8 articles and an interview. The authors participating are: Ana Glenda Tager (Alianza por la Paz), Roger Mac Ginty (Durham Global Security Institute), José Antonio Guevara Bermúdez (Autonomous University of Tlaxcala, Mexico), Carolina Ricardo (Instituto Sou da Paz ), Mohamed Daghar (ENACT), Esperanza Hernández Delgado (La Salle University, Colombia), Jordi Mir (Pompeu Fabra University) and Sabina Puig (ICIP).

The monograph also includes an interview with Mary Kaldor, an expert in war, peace and security studies. The coordination was carried out by Sabina Puig, head of the ‘Violence in non-war settings’ area of ICIP.

On May 12, ICIP will hold a virtual magazine presentation on Twitter. The session will feature the participation of the authors Carolina Ricardo and José Antonio Guevara Bermúdez.

New design

With the release of this issue, the 40th edition, the magazine launches a new digital platform completely renewed and integrated into the ICIP website. The team responsible for the new design is Whads.

The renovation aims to open a new stage to consolidate the magazine’s trajectory and increase its scope and projection.

Based on articles, lectures and debates, Peace in Progress magazine offers a broad and multifaceted look at issues affecting peacebuilding. The aim is to contribute to the public discussion and provide content, diagnosis and proposals.

The magazine has published monographs on dialogue in polarised societies, drugs and violence in Latin America, missing persons, and the need to reorient security from feminism.

Check the new magazine here.

Representatives of the different European working groups (‘nodos’ in Spanish) supporting the Truth Commission in Colombia have participated in a meeting from April 7 to 10 at the UNESCO House in Barcelona.

The meeting, convened by the ICIP as Technical Secretariat of the Commission in Europe, brought together around fifty representatives from the ‘nodos’ of Germany, Belgium, Denmark, France, Spain, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

This is the fourth meeting of this type organised and the first held in person in the last two years after the previous activities were carried out virtually due to the coronavirus pandemic. The meeting had the support of the Catalan Agency for Cooperation to the Development (Agència Catalana de Cooperació al Desenvolupament – ACCD).

According to one of the meeting organisers, ICIP technician Sílvia Plana, it has served to “meet again and strengthen our collaboration and trust. Likewise, we have been able to take stock of what the more than three years of support process for the Commission from abroad have implied and coordinate efforts for the presentation and socialisation of the final report that the Commission will deliver on June 28,” she explained.

Commissioner Lucía González Duque and Commissioner Carlos Martín Beristain also participated in this meeting to set the scene for the presentation of the report and coordinate the Commission’s legacy strategy abroad.

According to Martín Beristain, “the meeting has made it possible to articulate the work with the groups in exile and the people who have helped us weave the work from abroad. Now we hope that the final report will be a boost for the transformation that Colombia needs”, he assured.

At the meeting, the participants also talked about the systematisation of the process that has been used in the last three years to collect the testimony of the victims of the Colombian conflict exiled in Europe. At the same time, the role of the groups in exile and their legacy has been reflected upon once the commission concludes its mandate.

The meeting also served to commemorate the National Day of Memory and Solidarity with the Victims of the Armed Conflict in Colombia on April 9. The ICIP organised a commemorative act with the participation of the institution’s director, Kristian Herbolzheimer; the Director-General for the Catalan Agency for Cooperation to the Development, Josep Desquens; and the two commissioners attending the meeting.

During the act, two of the victims’ representatives, Adriana Quintero Úsuga and Albeiro Moya Mena, read a statement approved by all those present. You can read the text of the declaration here (in Spanish).

The Colombian singer-songwriter resident in Barcelona, Marta Gómez, was in charge of closing the activity by interpreting some songs.

Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, various rallies and demonstrations have been organized in Barcelona and elsewhere in Catalonia.

On Wednesday, March 2, Barcelona said: “No to war”.

The massive outcry that made the city vibrate 18 years ago against the US attack on Iraq has now been revived by another unilateral intervention, the Russian Army against Ukraine.

The anti-war platform Stop the War (Plataforma Aturem la Guerra) organized the rally with the support of more than 300 entities.

According to the Guardia Urbana, the concentration brought together 3,500 people.

In the protest, the journalist and activist David Fernández and the actress Cristina Brondo read the manifesto published by the platform.

The manifesto expresses itself against “the current military aggression of the Russian government against the Ukrainian population” and expresses solidarity with the citizens of Ukraine.

“Beyond the shows of solidarity and declarations of condemnation, it is necessary to take action to stop the violence. We are facing the worst eco-social crisis in history, and wars aggravate this situation because they generate destruction and greater pollution, events incompatible with life. We need our governments to act to stop the escalation of warmongering before falling into a war of devastating proportions,” says the manifesto.

The Aturem la Guerra Platform was born with the war in Iraq in 2003. On February 15 of that year, the city starred in one of the largest demonstrations in the world against the war in Iraq.

The Ukrainian community is protesting

On Sunday, March 6, the Ukrainian community living in Barcelona called another demonstration in Plaça Catalunya.

Several hundred people (about eight hundred, according to the Guardia Urbana) rallied to demand an end to the war that began with the Russian invasion of Ukraine and for NATO to establish an exclusion zone in the area that prevent flight of planes from Russia.

The protesters, who carried Ukrainian flags and numerous banners calling for an end to the war and a no-fly zone, observed a minute’s silence for the victims of the war.

Plaça Catalunya in Barcelona has become the daily meeting point for Ukrainians since the outbreak of the war. People with Ukrainian flags gather every afternoon and several camp in the area at night.

ICIP strongly condemns Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine, which began this morning. The onslaught of Russian forces is unprecedented in European territory. In addition to its humanitarian, economic, political and environmental consequences, it will have a disastrous impact on peace-building efforts in Ukraine, Europe, and the world.

Russia has started a war that ends nine years of efforts to find a peaceful solution to the conflict in the Ukrainian region of Donbas. The invasion blew up the 2014 Minsk Accords, which created a ceasefire and a roadmap for resolving the war. Also, it sweeps away citizen initiatives for social and political dialogue, human rights advocacy and criticism of authoritarianism in Ukraine and Russia.

At the same time, the attack is destroying Europe’s conflict prevention architecture, based on the concept of “shared security” and dialogue within the framework of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). It breaks the fragile international consensus on the need to prioritize diplomacy to resolve conflicts.

“The European Union and NATO have not had the vision, ambition and generosity to design a security architecture outside of militarism and the idea of the external enemy for the last thirty years”, said Kristian Herbolzheimer, director of the ICIP. “But Russia’s action is hampering any critical initiative with the prevailing security model, and instead of disarming Europe, we are embarking on a new arms race”. This is a scenario that is even more worrying given Russia’s nuclear capacity and the existence of fifteen atomic reactors in Ukraine.

Given this situation, it is necessary to demand weapons to stop immediately to protect the civilian population. At the same time, it is essential to avoid the warlike dynamics of building the image of the enemy: “Putin is not Russia. Putin has embarked on a war adventure that could end up plaguing the Russian people themselves”, said the ICIP director.

In the field of peacebuilding, we reaffirm that war can never be an option. In the face of today’s scenario in Ukraine, courage, creativity and social support are needed to find alternatives to the weapons based on the concept of shared security.

ICIP has released two songs composed by 120 victims who left Colombia because of the armed conflict, and the Colombian singer-songwriter based in Barcelona, Marta Gómez. This innovative initiative of citizen participation was promoted by the Truth Commission of Colombia.

The proposal for this project came from the Catalunya Node, a meeting and coordination space for organizations that support the work of the Commission. The Node has led the task of taking 120 testimonies from victims of the conflict living in Catalonia (out of more than a thousand interviews that have been conducted worldwide).

“It is essential to accompany the victim interviews with psychosocial support measures; that is why we decided to organize these workshops. We wanted to turn emotions and experiences into music with the aim of strengthening healing through an artistic exercise,” explains Helga Flamtermesky, one of the Catalunya Node interviewers. “Art is a great tool to process traumatic events such as exile and migration,” says ICIP member Ana Isabel Barrera. “During the interviews, we realized that people not only talked about what they felt living outside of Colombia, but also asked questions about the country,” she added.

Two songs, two audiovisuals

This observation inspired the creation of two songs that complement each other. The first one, “Surcos de amor,” talks about the relationship that the victims have with Colombia in their imagination. The second one, “Vuelve,” is intended as a symbolic response from Colombia to the victims.

The songs are performed by the Colombian singer-songwriter based in Catalonia, Marta Gómez. The artist was one of the people in charge of leading the workshops that she remembers in a very special way:

“The workshops were a gift to my soul. At first I thought it would be very difficult to try to compose a song with people who had never written one, but it ended up being a magical experience,” she says.

“In the end, all those people who told me shyly at the beginning of the workshop that they wouldn’t know what to say ended up becoming creative writers, capable of expressing everything they had experienced and suffered through, turning it into poetry,” she adds.

The two songs that were created will be published on Spotify, in an EP entitled “Canciones de ida y vuelta.” But the process has also resulted in two audiovisual products: a documentary and a music video.

The producer, Iván Guarnizo, has recorded the creative process of producing the songs in a short documentary entitled “Tejiendo canciones.”  About this process he says: “The documentary is about a collective creative process. We witness how the participants get to know each other and, together, weave the song until the singer-songwriter records it in a studio.”

In addition, Karolina Villarraga, of the MicuFilm production company, won a public competition to produce a music video for “Vuelve.” She decided to film an animated video starring a masked mother bear and her bear cub.

“We chose the masked bear, an emblematic animal of Colombia, as a symbolic character and protagonist of the narrative, bearing in mind that the armed conflict also affects the environment,” explains the person in charge of the music video.

The two songs, the documentary and the music video were presented on 17 September at 8pm in an online event where the artists talked about the creative process.

The ICIP Library reopens to the public from this week after the summer holidays and the temporary closure due to the coronavirus pandemic.

In this new season, the centre will be open on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. Therefore, at this time, users can renew or repay loans and consult the available fund, which reaches 9,000 volumes.

Likewise, users can contact the centre via email at biblioteca@icip.cat to resolve queries and doubts.

The ICIP Library is a reference centre in Catalonia specializing in the culture of peace, non-violence, security and conflict.

The Library is located at 10 Tapineria Street, 1st floor of Barcelona. It supports ICIP and researchers and experts in peace and is in constant contact with similar institutions and centres worldwide.

The centre is part of the Generalitat’s network of specialized libraries and is part of the Collective Catalog of Catalan Universities (CCUC).

You can check the online catalog here.

In the municipal plenary session of Friday, 30 July, the City Council of Lleida passed a motion recognising Colombian exiles and migrants living in the city and surrounding area.

The proposal received the support of all the Council’s political groups: ERC-AM, PSC, JxCat Lleida, Comú de Lleida, Cs, and PP, all voted in favour of the motion.

This initiative was launched by the Coordinating Committee of Development NGOs and other solidarity movements in Lleida in coordination with the Catalonia Node in support of the Truth Commission of Colombia and ICIP (International Catalan Institute for Peace).

According to Carme Campoy, board member of the Coordinating Committee of Development NGOs, “the work of the Colombian diaspora – about 3,000 migrants and exiles in Lleida – is an example to follow to promote coexistence, social cohesion and peace.”

“It is essential that the citizens of Lleida and its institutions recognize and support the work towards the building of a stable and lasting peace in Colombia by the diaspora and the victims of the armed conflict living in the city,” she added.

The dignity of the victims

The motion that has passed focuses on the dignity of the victims and ensures that their processes of resistance and resilience, and their contributions to peace in Colombia and Lleida, are publicly recognized by institutions and host societies.

The approved text “recognizes the contributions of civil society organizations in Lleida to a sustainable and lasting peace in Colombia and support of the Colombian migrant and exiled community.”  It was also agreed to hold a meeting with representatives of the Colombian diaspora and exiles, together with solidarity organizations in Lleida, “to publicly recognize their dignity, work and contributions to peace in Colombia and their host community.”

According to the local census, 2,952 Colombians (1,553 women and 1,399 men) live in Lleida, which amounts to 2.1% of the city’s population.

During the last few months, ICIP and the Catalonia Node have organized several workshops with the Colombian community of Lleida, in coordination with the Department of Education, Cooperation, Civil Rights and Feminism of the Lleida City Council and the Coordinating Committee of Development NGOs.  These workshops provided information about the peace process in Colombia and victims’ rights. Also, they identified the specific needs of the Colombian community in the capital of the comarca of El Segrià.

One of the people who participated in this process is Marina Camargo Jinete, a victim of the conflict who has lived in Alcarràs for three years.  In the presentation of the motion in the plenary session, Camargo spoke of her experience as an exile in El Segrià:

“The Colombian community living in Lleida is very grateful for the warm welcome and hospitality we have received.  We are here to say thank you on behalf of the refugees.  For the Colombian community, this motion is like a tree that gives us shelter and a feeling of belonging, protection and welcoming among the Catalan people,” she said.

María Rosario Vásquez, the spokeswoman of the Catalonia Node, also participated in the plenary session and ended her speech by talking about the restorative effect this motion has for victims living in Catalonia.

An educational process led by ICIP

ICIP was one of the main promoters of the motion that passed on Friday.  The institution has acted as the Technical Secretariat of the Truth Commission of Colombia since 2018.  Its role is to enable any victim of the conflict to provide their testimony and reconstruct historical memory and reconciliation.  It also works to familiarize host societies with the peace process in Colombia and the Colombian people who live among us.  With this goal in mind, fifteen spaces for citizen participation called “nodes” have been created in ten European countries, with the Catalonia node being one of the most active.

In this context, ICIP has proposed the promotion of municipal motions in support of victims living abroad.  Lleida has become the first city to support this initiative and has thus become an international model for other cities and international institutions.

“There is little awareness that people are living among us who have been victims of war and who have had to rebuild their social and professional life in a foreign country.  We want to recognize the courage and dignity of these people and facilitate their integration in Lleida,” says Ana Isabel Barrera, also a Colombian victim and a technician in ICIP’s area of Memory, Coexistence and Reconciliation.

A historic peace agreement

After fifty years of war, on 26 September 2016, the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrilla group signed a historic Peace Agreement.

As a result of the Agreement, the Commission for the Clarification of the Truth, Coexistence and Non-Repetition was created to identify the causes of the armed conflict and guarantee the right of victims and society to truth, justice and reparation and thus prevent new wars.  The Commission will present its report at the end of this year.

According to the Truth Commission, of the more than five million Colombians living abroad, at least 500,000 are war victims.