“The war has prevented us from loving (ourselves)” – LGBTI conflict victim
During the armed conflict, armed groups targeted specific populations because of personal characteristics like age, ethnicity, class, and gender. This was especially the case for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) community. Their rights unrecognized, LGBTI people were targeted by both legal and illegal armed actors. Sexual orientation and gender identity were impetuses for violence. LGBTI people have been denied the possibility to openly love their partners and express themselves because of the fear that they would be killed.
Under the civil war’s violence, LGBTI people have been the targets of symbolic violence, torture, sexual violence, threats, physical aggression, and murder. Violence committed by paramilitary groups, guerrillas, the armed forces, the police, and others have forced LGBTI people to hide themselves and keep their identities invisible. Discourses by armed actors and society itself against the LGBTI community have justified the violence and perpetrated imaginaries of patriarchy and social control. In the face of this violence, members of the LGBTI community have come together to resist and to survive.
For over 50 years, Colombia has suffered internal armed conflict between the government and multiple illegal armed groups. The violence has left over 8 million registered conflict victims, including over 260,000 people killed, 85,000 forcibly disappeared, and 6 million internally displaced.
In recent years, however, the tides have begun to change. In 2011, the Colombian government signed a comprehensive victims reparation and land restitution law to compensate those affected by violence with financial reparations, psychosocial and physical rehabilitation, truth and satisfaction measures, land restitution, and guarantees of non-repetition. Moreover, last year, following four years of negotiations, the government and the country’s largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), reached a peace accord. In June 2017, the FARC completed its disarmament, thus ceasing to exist as an armed group.
To implement the peace accords and advance what Harvard University called the most ambitious victims’ reparation policy of its kind, Colombia faces numerous challenges, among them guaranteeing the inclusion and reparation of populations that have suffered decades of targeted violence. One of these is the LGBTI community.