Colombian Armed Research Articles

Functional Connectivity Analysis of Prejudice Among Colombian Armed Conflict Former Actors.

Functional Connectivity Analysis of Prejudice Among Colombian Armed Conflict Former Actors.

Emotional Competences in Adolescents Exposed to Colombian Armed Conflict During Their Childhood

AbstractObjective: Analyse the mediation role of emotional competences on behavior problems in adolescents exposed to Armed-Conflict Childhood Adversities (ACCA). Method: Families with adolescent children who studied in three schools in the municipality of Soacha, Colombia, were invited to participate in the study. One hundred and sixty-one participants were selected and pooled into three groups according to their Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) scores: lower-ACE (LACE), higher-ACE (HACE), and ACCA using the Adverse Childhood Experiences Questionnaire for Adolescents (ACE-QA). The Emotion Recognition Task, the Empathy for Pain Task, and the Child Behavior Checklist assessed teenagers’ emotional functioning. Results: Teenagers exposed to ACCA more frequently experienced childhood adversities such as domestic violence, child abuse, and parental neglect. Moreover, these adolescents were less accurate in discriminating angry faces, reported higher control perception after social stressors, were more rigorous in punishing those who intentionally harmed others, and showed more internalizing behavior problems. In the mediational model, we found that: the control perception after social stress mediated the reduction of depressive symptoms in adolescents with ACCA history. Additionally, inaccuracy in perceiving angry faces and harsh punishment toward behaviors that intentionally harm others mediated the presence of thinking problems, anxiety, and rule-breaking behaviors. Conclusions: Colombian adolescents who experienced ACCA showed specific changes in their emotional competences, which mediate the parental report of behavioral problems. These results indicate the need for more focused interventions aimed at improving the emotional competences and mental health of adolescent victims of armed conflicts.

Sex Trade and ‘Floating Migration’ in the Colombian Armed Conflict

This article analyses the dynamics of the sex trade in the context of the Colombian armed conflict. It argues that the sex trade has adapted to the conflict and its different actors and demonstrates how it operates in such constrained contexts. The article is based on ethnographic research with sex workers in Bogotá who have experience working in different conflict zones. It found that the sex trade is dynamic and that sex workers develop strategies to resist violence and adapt to the respective contexts. These sex workers are a type of ‘floating migrants’, living and surviving on the sex trade not only for the income it generates but also for the relationships they build with other sex workers, establishment managers, and combatants. The article concludes that the sex trade in Colombia did not arise as a result of the armed conflict. Rather, it is a phenomenon that exists as part of a broader market before, during, and after episodes of violence.

Embodiment and Reciprocity of Healing: Restoration and Healing Processes of a Group of Women who Survived Sexual Violence in the Context of the Colombian Armed Conflict

This article presents the results of the research carried out with a group of women who survived sexual violence in the context of the Colombian armed conflict. We reflect on their life stories and analyze them emphasizing the effects that the victimizing events have had on the following dimensions: socio-affective relationships, expectations, life projects, and social and work survival strategies that they have developed regarding housing and economics. Comparing the experiences narrated by each surviving women with each of these dimensions allowed us to identify that they have carried out restoration and healing processes in a differentiated way; the latter have been a product of the solidarity they have managed to weave within the organizations they have created or have been involved with.

Reproductive justice in the Colombian armed conflict.

This study explores the impacts of armed conflict on women's sexual and reproductive health in Colombia, building on a reproductive justice perspective to analyse original interviews with stakeholders in healthcare, women's rights, and peacebuilding. The analysis reveals that war affects women's sexual and reproductive health in three ways, through violent politicisation, collateral damage, and intersectional dimensions. First, multiple armed actors have used women's health as an instrument in politically motivated strategies to increase their power, assigning political meaning to sexuality and reproduction within the context of war. Second, women's health has also suffered from secondary damage of conflict resulting from a decay in healthcare service provision and an unmet need for healthcare services among those affected by sexual and reproductive violence. Third, marginalised women have been particularly affected by a discriminatory nexus of poverty, ethnicity, and geographic inequality. The paper concludes with a reflection on the opportunities for reproductive justice in Colombia.

Considerations on Transitional Justice and the Defense of Human Rights in the Continuum of the Colombian Armed Conflict

Transitional justice according to international standards for the protection of human rights, must satisfy the demands of the victims regarding the rights to truth, justice, reparation, and measures of non-repetition. Nevertheless, as far as the Colombian case is concerned, the persistence of the armed conflict shows a tension between the defense of human rights and the imprecise outcome of the transitional justice process. For this reason, the main advances of the Special Tribunal for Peace are identified, noting among other things that fear and crime factors, as categories of analysis, have legitimized the attack against the "enemy", since the historicity of the armed conflict as a continuum.

Gender Dynamics During the Colombian Armed Conflict

Abstract This article investigates gender dynamics during the Colombian armed conflict, where the ongoing peace process has had a unique focus on gender equality. Using a lens of militarized masculinity and original expert interviews with Colombian stakeholders in peacebuilding and human rights, the study analyzes how gender norms have been upheld and sanctioned in the context of conflict. Gender essentialisms have been reinforced by armed actors, with women’s and LGBT people’s bodies as central channels for reproducing traditional sociobiological roles. Expressions not conforming to the heterocisnormative gender order have been sanctioned with violence. While men have been disproportionally affected by combat violence, women and sexual and gender minorities have been more vulnerable to sexual violence and forced displacement. This militarization of gender norms in Colombia has constructed women’s and queer bodies as battlefields of war, severely undermining their safety, dignity, and autonomy.

Armed conflict exposure and mental health: examining the role of imperceptible violence

ABSTRACT Armed conflict exposure is associated with multiple mental health problems. However, more needs to be known about the differential effects of particular modalities of armed conflict violence and war methods on mental health. This study a) examined the modalities of violence employed in the Colombian armed conflict and b) assessed their association with mental health problems in armed conflict survivors. Using armed conflict data from the Colombian Armed Conflict Events Information System, we identified three violence modalities: armed confrontations, indiscriminate attacks, and selective violence. Descriptive statistics showed that selective violence generated most (86%) of the 333,219 victims of the Colombian armed conflict between 1996 and 2016. A subsample of armed conflict survivors (n = 551) from the 2015 Colombian Mental Health Survey was used to assess the association of each modality of violence with depression and anxiety, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and substance abuse. Adjusted Odds Ratios (aOR) (p < .05, 95% CI) showed that survivors of selective violence crimes such as forced disappearance of loved ones, kidnapping, sexual violence, and massacres were at increased risk of experiencing Common Mental Health Disorders, PTSD symptoms, and hazardous drinking. Identifying those at elevated risk for developing mental health problems and substance misuse among survivors of armed conflict may help to use limited resources more effectively.

(Un)Doing the Colombian Armed Conflict

English Abstract: In 2005, Colombia enacted the Justice and Peace Law, which was a transitional framework for addressing the legal status of demobilised members of the paramilitary group Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia [United Self-Defence of Colombia] and other armed groups. In exchange for providing intelligence on the whereabouts of the bodies of people these groups had kidnapped and killed, prison sentences could be reduced. Forensic experts from the Attorney General’s Office were in charge of exhuming and identifying the bodies, placing them centre-stage as a source of scientific evidence, testimony and authority based on their presumed objectivity and non-prejudicial approach. However, forensic knowledge, like all knowledge, is situated, partial and performative. Here, I attend to the effects of forensic knowledge on victims’ right to truth, memory practices and the administration of justice under the Justice and Peace Law. I argue that forensic knowledge co-produces conflict by producing victims and perpetrators whose identities and stories can be at odds with other accounts of the violence that occurred.French Abstract: En 2005, la loi sur la justice et la paix a été promulguée en Colombie. Il s’agissait d’un cadre transitoire permettant de régler le statut juridique des membres démobilisés du groupe paramilitaire Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia [Autodéfenses unies de Colombie] et d’autres groupes armés. Cette loi prévoyait la réduction des peines de prison en échange de renseignements sur l’emplacement des corps des personnes que ces groupes avaient enlevées et tuées. Des experts médico-légaux du bureau du procureur étaient chargés d’exhumer et d’identifier les corps. Cela les plaçait au centre de la scène en tant que source de preuves scientifiques, de témoignages et d’autorité, en raison de leur objectivité présumée et de leur approche non préjudiciable. Cependant, la connaissance médico-légale, comme toute connaissance, est située, partielle et performative. Je m’intéresse ici aux effets des connaissances médico-légales sur le droit des victimes à la vérité, les pratiques de mémoire et l’administration de la justice dans le cadre de la loi Justice et Paix en Colombie. Je soutiens que les connaissances médico-légales coproduisent des conflits en produisant des victimes et des auteurs dont les identités et les histoires peuvent être en contradiction avec d’autres récits de la violence qui s’est produite.

Strategic Submission to Rape is not Consent: Sexual Violence in the Colombian Armed Conflict.

Academic literature is only beginning to understand victims' rational calculations and agency related to sexual violence in war and conflict. This article deepens that analysis, emphasizing calculated action rather than passive victimization. This is a systematic study of victims' strategic responses to sexual violence, and reports findings from an in-depth analysis of women who were raped in the context of Colombia's armed conflict (1964-present), revealing that this context triggers a strategic response by victims of rape. Specifically, some women calculate that submitting to unwanted sex is more likely to protect them and others, such as family members, from significant harm than resisting rape. However, while their strategic responses may protect them and allow them to keep their families safe from greater harm, the methods adopted by women in these situations may complicate their efforts at being recognized as victims, undercutting their access to legal and social rights in the aftermath of war and conflict.

Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms Among Polyvictimized Women in the Colombian Armed Conflict: The Mediating Role of Social Acknowledgment.

For decades, in a situation of armed conflict in Colombia, women have suffered polyvictimization and discrimination with severe consequences that last even during the post-war peace process. This study analyzes the impact on posttraumatic stress and recovery of war-related violence against women, discrimination, and social acknowledgment. A cross-sectional study was conducted in 2019–2020. Participants were 148 women with a mean age of 47.66years (range 18–83), contacted through the NGO Ruta Pacifica de las Mujeres who had experienced significant personal violence. Results show that levels of perceived discrimination and lack of social acknowledgment are mediators in the relationship between polyvictimization and posttraumatic stress symptoms. Recognition by significant others, disapproval by family and the larger social milieu affects different posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) dimensions and therefore how these women adapt to the effects of trauma. Findings provide strong evidence that the way society and family treats women after a traumatic event affects how the victim recovers from this event. Recognition as a victim and disapproval can coexist and be a burden for women if not adequately addressed. Results stress the importance of understanding and intervening in PTSD recovery through the analysis of social processes, and not only through and individual focus.

Human Agency and Tourism Development in Natural National Parks in the Context of the Colombian Armed Conflict

The goal of this research is to explore through evolutionary and relational economic geography how the human agency of local communities, organized armed groups, and the central government together shape the evolutionary trajectory of a national natural park as a tourist destination where armed conflict is present. The research was conducted in El Cocuy National Natural Park in Colombia and focuses on the period after the arrival of the High Mountain Battalion in 2003. Data collected from 11 key informants in semistructured interviews were analyzed with Atlas. ti and complemented with documentary analysis. The results show the dynamics of human agency in the National Natural Park and its effects at three levels: 1) local communities see their creative capacity and decision-making conditioned by power and control/pressures exerted by organized armed groups and the government; 2) the actions of organized armed groups control and limit ecotourism development; and 3) public regulations restrict these places' evolutionary pathways. Overall, actions derived from power relations exercised by the organized armed groups and the central government determined the evolutionary trajectory of the destination, reducing its adaptability to change, the empowerment of local communities, and its prospects.

Contribuciones de Alfredo Correa de Andreis a la comprensión del Desplazamiento Forzado en el conflicto Armado Colombiano

Publicación semestral del Centro de Investigaciones en Desarrollo Humano -CIDHUM-, de la División de Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales y de la Dirección de Investigación, Desarrollo e Innovación -DIDI- de la Universidad del Norte; que pone al alcance de la comunidad nuevas perspectivas y potencialidades de la investigación en el campo del desarrollo humano

Memory and Trauma: Soldier Victims in the Colombian Armed Conflict

The Colombian government signed a revised version of the Havana Peace Deal with the country’s main guerrilla group, Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), in November 2016, giving rise to a set of new opportunities and challenges for the South American nation. Societies that make the transition from conflict to peace need to seek truth, justice, and reparation concerning massive and systematic violations. Thus truth, history, and historical memory (HM) are central to reconciliation and play a key role in fulfilling the national and international obligations of the state. HM in Colombia has emerged mainly from the voices of victims, generating a narrative of events in which the discourses of members of the Armed Forces has, by and large, tended either to be out of place, or is regarded as the perpetrators’ account. Military personnel have usually been perceived to be offenders or perpetrators; finding the “truth” based on narratives of traumatic events is complex. This research contributes to the debate on HM in Colombia and the right to truth, exploring the narratives and emotions of traumatized soldiers who suffered permanent physical injuries, and presenting the results of an interdisciplinary project conducted via a series of in-depth interviews. It brought to light important accounts and deeply negative feelings toward the perpetrators of violence and the government, but also mixed feelings about the institution of the military that soldier victims continue to harbor.

Collective Narratives and Memories of the Colombian Armed Conflict

La presente investigación tuvo como fin comprender las narrativas colectivas y memorias sobre paz y conflicto armado presentes en las familias que han vivido el desplazamiento forzado, y en sus hijos e hijas de la primera infancia. Particularmente, el artículo se focaliza en los relatos de las madres y abuelas de estas niñas y estos niños alrededor del conflicto armado, sus tránsitos y la resignificación presente, abriendo futuros posibles de paz. Este artículo presenta los resultados del trabajo de campo realizado en los Centros de Desarrollo Infantil localizados en Manizales (Caldas) y Villa Rica (Cauca) de Colombia. El estudio se desarrolló a través de talleres que propiciaron la emergencia de narrativas colectivas como base para la comprensión de las memorias y la transformación orientada a la paz. Mediante el análisis categorial de narrativas se concluyó que las familias han sufrido los efectos por el conflicto armado, como el desplazamiento forzado, la muerte de familiares, el miedo ante la propia muerte o la de otros cercanos, junto con la pérdida de sus territorios y de prácticas sociales y culturales asociadas a la ruralidad. Sin embargo, los tránsitos del territorio de origen al territorio de acogida también han favorecido aprendizajes y el surgimiento de prácticas de solidaridad, que les han permitido construir nuevos sentidos de sus historias para promover prácticas orientadas a la construcción de paz y a la apertura a posibilidades futuras. Las familias han encontrado en las relaciones, en la resignificación de los territorios y en el contacto con la naturaleza, modos de resistir a las violencias y de aportar a la construcción de la paz.

INDICADORES DE GOBERNABILIDAD Y POSCONFLICTO EN EL MUNICIPIO DE VALLEDUPAR, COLOMBIA

&lt;p&gt;La gobernabilidad, es vista como el arte de gobernar bien o el ejercicio del buen gobierno para producir los resultados que la sociedad espera de sus gobernantes. Esta investigación evalúa el nivel de logro de los indicadores de gobernabilidad, de acuerdo con el modelo aplicado por el Instituto del Banco Mundial (IBM, 2017), en el municipio de Valledupar, Colombia. Se aplicó un diseño cuantitativo, el tipo de investigación es descriptiva y propositiva, se proponen nuevas formas de aplicación del conocimiento a la realidad encontrada en el ámbito local para mejorar las condiciones de vida de la ciudadanía. El instrumento aplicado fue estructurado con base en los seis indicadores propuestos por el IBM, y se agregó otro relacionado con la actitud de la administración local, para adaptar la gobernabilidad al nuevo escenario producto de los acuerdos entre el gobierno colombiano y las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionaria Colombiana (FARC). Se sistematizó, procesó, analizó e interpretó la información obtenida por los investigadores, y se propone, a la Administración Municipal, una serie de instrumentos, estrategias y dinámicas que ayudaran a mejorar los índices de gobernabilidad y apoyo social a las políticas públicas municipales que coadyuven en fortalecer un escenario constructivo de paz en el posconflicto.&lt;/p&gt;

Coping Strategies Used by Female Victims of the Colombian Armed Conflict: The Women in the Colombian Conflict (MUCOCO) Program

The effects of armed conflict on women in post-conflict situations are an area of analysis for social disciplines. This study will analyze the situation in Colombia, currently involved in a peace restoration process. The aim is to verify the efficacy of a coping and emotion regulation program analyzing victimization as well as the coping strategies employed in response to these violent acts. The program focuses on 62 women contacted through the Ruta Pacífica de las Mujeres, a nongovernmental organization. The program had a positive effect on women, reporting lower levels of posttraumatic stress, more functional coping strategies, and less use of dysfunctional strategies. All emotional cognitive and social indicators improved. Women felt emotionally better, perceiving greater social support and more trust in institutions. Survivors had more self-confidence to achieve their goals and solve their problems. The implications in a context of peace reconstruction and search for social cohesion are discussed.

Armed Conflict and Fertility in Colombia, 2000–2010

This paper looks at the association between the Colombian Armed Internal Conflict (AIC) and fertility for women in the first decade of the 21st century when the conflict underwent a strategic change after the escalation of armed action by outlaw groups and frontal response by the Colombian government. We fit a Poisson model that incorporates spatial and temporal information, using individual-level data from the Colombian Demographic and Health Surveys from 2000 to 2010 and novel information, for the Colombian case, on the number of armed actions. In rural areas, we find that the AIC had a significant positive association with fertility and non-significant relationship in urban areas, of any size with robust and consistent estimators. Two possible explanations may clarify these results for a long-term conflict such as that in Colombia: (i) women’s responses to higher mortality levels and (ii) the weakening of local institutions assumed to provide protection and health-related services to women. Other than the improvement of health-related services in areas affected by the conflict, we also suggest data collection on these latter conditions directly from the population involved to facilitate future research on the connection between conflicts and demographic outcomes.

La vejez que nadie imaginó: afectaciones a la preparación económica de las personas mayores de hoy y del mañana en el marco del conflicto armado en Colombia

La vejez que nadie imaginó: afectaciones a la preparación económica de las personas mayores de hoy y del mañana en el marco del conflicto armado en Colombia

LOS NOMBRES DE NUESTRA GUERRA. BALANCE DEL INFORME DE LA COMISIÓN HISTÓRICA DEL CONFLICTO Y SUS VÍCTIMAS EN COLOMBIA

En el marco del proceso de paz entre el Gobierno colombiano y las FARC-EP, en febrero de 2015 se presentó el Informe Contribución al entendimiento del conflicto armado colombiano elaborado por la Comisión Histórica del Conflicto y sus Víctimas. Un documento que por medio de ensayos individuales, indaga acerca de los orígenes, factores de persistencia e impactos del conflicto armado, y además, permite construir un panorama de los principales abordajes actuales frente al tema. El artículo propone un acercamiento en perspectiva historiográfica al Informe, esclareciendo las características principales de la Comisión que le dio origen, balanceando algunos debates en torno al conflicto y la paz en el país y resaltando su papel como insumo para un recuento histórico plural en un contexto de transición a la política sin armas.