Over the last two weeks, Survivor Corps and DISNNET have published the first two weekly bulletins centralizing information about the campaign to ratify the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The bulletins have included overviews of the activities of organizations participating in the campaign, information on ratifications in other countries, and articles and news related to the convention. The most recent bulletin includes the following news (roughly translated from Spanish) about the Colombian campaign:

"The office of the Vice President is organizing a press conference in which the Vice President of the Republic, Francisco Santos, will announce that the convention ratification bill is being officially presented to members of Congress as an urgent matter. Thanks to the activities of Oscar Saúl Cortes and Maria Angelica Serrato, with the support of Maria Victoria Garcia de Santos, the members of [our] Human Rights and Capacity Network will be invited to attend the conference, a gesture that recognizes the legitimacy of our network and the work that we are developing together. Although the date of the press conference is to be announced, it is possible that it will take place on the afternoon of August 28."

Survivor Corps is also putting together an internship program with law students from the Universidad de los Andes. The students are members of a class on law and disability, part of a two-year-old academic program on disability called PAIIS. Over the next few weeks, Survivor Corps and PAIIS will orient the students and define their responsibilities, including production of the weekly bulletin.

At a recent meeting of disability rights organizations, one participant expressed her amazement at the number of organizations and networks that work on disability rights, and their complete lack of coordination. Everyone agreed, noting that they hadn't even heard of some of the groups mentioned during our meetings.

Accordingly, the organizations in the campaign to ratify the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities have been doing a lot of very basic work to share information and coordinate previously isolated efforts. The first thing Paola and I did when I arrived in Colombia was create a directory of organizations and clean up Survivor Corps' listserves. Now we're working with one of our partners, DISNNET, to create a weekly email centralizing news about the ratification campaign in Colombia and offering perspectives on the regional and international context.

In working on the weekly email, I've been getting to know the information networks that support work on disability rights in Colombia and abroad. Here in Colombia, our partner DISNNET produces a daily e-mail newsletter that reports and editorializes on all sorts of developments related to disability, including political, cultural, and scientific issues.

In Latin America, the listserve Discapacidad y Derechos Humanos includes organizations from many countries working for ratification of the convention, and addressing other topics related to disability rights. The group Ratify Now serves a similar purpose globally.

The conversations over these lists include news of new ratifications (as of today, 36 countries have ratified the convention) and perspectives on the course of existing campaigns. There have been conversations about whether it's best for countries to bring themselves into full compliance with the convention before ratifying it, or whether such a strategy obstructs progress that could be made through early ratification and "progressive realization."

Here in Colombia, the organizations participating in the ratification campaign will meet on Monday to agree on a plan of meetings with government officials and public education. I'm hopeful that we can also get the weekly email started soon after Monday's meeting.

The United Nations has declared December 3 International Day of Persons With Disabilities. Here in Bogotá, Survivor Corps and its partners will observe the day by organizing a national forum promoting ratification of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The forum will bring together Colombian and international speakers to introduce the convention to a Colombian audience and address several themes:

First, Colombian speakers will analyze the conditions of people with disabilities in Colombia, a complicated task given the range of physical and mental disabilities that exist, the social diversity of the country, the myriad causes of disability, and the lack of reliable data on disability within Colombia.

Second, international speakers will discuss their experiences in organizing successful campaigns to ratify the convention in other countries.

Third, speakers will discuss the rights of people with disabilities, including the rights to health, education, legal standing, accessibility, and communication.

Fourth, leaders of Colombian organizations of persons with disabilities will discuss the significance of the convention for families with disabilities.

After these discussions, the goal is to use the end of the forum to produce a demonstration of commitment to ratification among the government representatives present. Starting with sympathetic members of the Colombian government in attendance, Survivor Corps and its partners hope to promote a shared commitment to ratification among the separate branches of the Colombian government.

This political goal is not simple in Colombia right now. For one thing, the rights of people with disabilities are an immeasurably low priority in national politics, overshadowed by the upcoming presidental election, the Uribe administration's attacks on the supreme court, and the liberation of Ingrid Betancourt. Moreover, Uribe's attacks on the supreme court complicate any chance of collaboration among the different branches of government.

I've been getting to know the network of disability rights organizations that Survivor Corps is working with to ratify the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. It is a diverse group, including medical service providers, educational institutions, anti-landmine organizations, government agencies, and international NGOs.

There is no simple relationship between the work that these groups do for disability rights in Colombia and struggles for peace and economic equality. All of Survivor Corps' partners work in a politicized context, responding to injustices in Colombia's systems of education, employment, and health care, as well as the physical and social consequences of warfare. At the same time, many maintain distance from the country's self-identified human rights organizations and the country's struggling democratic left. A sampling of these groups suggests the range of their commitments and the complexity of the network's place in national politics:

The Centro de Rehabilitación para Adultos Ciegos supports people with visual disabilities. It provides medical services, educational support, job training, and leadership development programs. CRAC would exist whether or not there were a war in Colombia.

Fundación Querido Soldado provides economic support to disabled veterans of the Colombian military, essentially taking on a public responsibility that the Colombian government has refused. Fundación Querido Soldado maintains close relations with the military and vocally opposes the FARC.

Pastoral Social is an arm of the Episcopal Church in Colombia with an explicit focus on human rights. It conducts human rights trainings in rural areas and supports the expansion of private services as well as public benefits for victims of Colombia's armed conflict.

Centro Integral de Rehabilitación de Colombia (CIREC) provides medical services to people with disabilities, particularly victims of landmines. CIREC has created rural and mobile health clinics to reach landmine victims far from urban health care facilities, and provides "integrated rehabilitation," including physical, psychological, and social services, as well as leadership training.

Fundación País Libre conducts campaigns to stop kidnappings, disappearances, and blackmail by guerillas and paramilitaries. It also offers assistance to victims and their families.

The network includes university programs on disability rights, mental health organizations, international institutions like UNICEF and the Red Cross, the Colombian Ministry of Social Protection, and the human rights and landmine programs within the offices of the President and Vicepresident.

There are areas of common ground for these groups: their commitment to guaranteeing the physical integrity and social inclusion of people with disabilities, their status as professionalized organizations with at least regional recognition, and—surely, sincerely, and without specificity—a desire for some kind of peace in Colombia. For Survivor Corps, the process of bringing together groups with different political orientations is itself a strategy for peace. At the same time, Colombians are far from resolving their profound conflicts over what peace would be and what kinds of social change are necessary to achieve it.

I arrived in Bogotá last week and have gotten a speedy introduction to Survivor Corps. The office in Bogotá is less than a year old, with one staff member, Paola Barragán, and, actually, no physical office. For nearly a year, Paola has been getting to know other Colombian organizations concerned with disability rights and has begun planning projects that will begin over the next few months.

Since I've arrived, we've been working on a campaign to convince the Colombian government to ratify the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The convention is an international agreement that asserts the following rights for people with disabilities:

• Right to life, liberty, and security of the person
• Equality before the law
• Freedom from torture, exploitation, violence, and abuse
• Respect for physical and mental integrity
• Freedom of movement and nationality
• Right to live independently and be included in the community
• Freedom of expression and opinion
• Respect for privacy, home, and family
• Right to education, health, work, and an adequate standard of living
• Right to participate in political and cultural life

The convention went into force on May 3, 2008 after five years of negotiations that involved governments and civil society organizations, as well as the direct participation of people with disabilities. But the convention doesn't actually bind in any country until that country's government ratifies it. Today, twenty governments have done so, and roughly thirty Colombian organizations and government agencies are working to win ratification here during 2009.

On Monday, Survivor Corps organized a meeting of these groups to start creating a unified plan of action. The rough idea at this point is to organize public forums, lobby legislators, and create an internal weekly e-mail digest to track the activities of each group.

Colombia is often depicted as an incomprehensibly frightening place. It is indeed a dangerous place to be a trade unionist, a journalist, or a person living in the path of an expanding oil palm plantation. At times over the last century, it has been an especially dangerous place to be a banana worker, a coffee farmer, or a member of either major political party.

Historians try to make sense of violence by analyzing its relationship to social, political, and economic change. What has been the relationship between violence and capitalist development in Colombia? Why has violence flourished within a relatively stable, ostensibly democratic two-party system? Trying to answer these questions produces a lot of disagreements, but it is one way to resist the fatalism that many people feel when facing a complex, extended case of war. It's a way of recalling that violence is not primordial, it's not entirely senseless, and it can come to an end.

As I prepare to leave for Bogotá, I'm thinking about the fact that I will be working with an organization that relates to Colombia's violence in a distinctive way. Survivor Corps is working to bring together people who have been on different sides of Colombia's armed conflict, and who are now disabled because of it. Using peer support, athletics, and a campaign for jobs, the organization hopes to achieve the goals of rehabilitation, social inclusion, and reconciliation. This is a challenging task at a time when the conflict is still going on. I'm only beginning to get a sense of the plans for the summer, and am waiting to learn more.