Sighs. Groans. Outcries. Shaking of heads.

Everyone is talking at the same time. No one can hear what anyone is saying.

It’s Monday, August 31^st. I’m at a meeting with all the institutions dealing with domestic violence in Cali. The point of the meeting is to agree upon the competence of each institution but people don’t seem to be agreeing very much.

The two main institutions,  “comisarias de familia” – family inspectors – and the Colombian Institute of Family Well Being (Bienestar Familiar) both claim they are doing more than they’re supposed to. Alba Nora Casanova, a police officer from the Child and Adolescent Unit points out that the Unit is the only institution to be open 24 hours. Police officers don’t know where to send children after 4pm and often end up taking them home with them because they can’t bear sending them back to where they live.

Everyone agrees that there aren’t enough resources and there’s no place to send victims of domestic violence, whether they are children or women, other than back to their homes. There also isn’t enough of a network. Institutions need to integrate their efforts.

For me, loose pieces of the puzzle are finally starting to come together. For weeks, I’ve been hearing story after story of victims going to report domestic violence, then being sent from office to office and finally back to their homes, to the same aggressors, to continue living in fear for their lives and the lives of their children. Since I’ve arrived I’ve been wondering: where does the gap lie? Why are all these women and children not receiving adequate protection? Of course the problem is incredibly complex and there are multiple factors. But if the institutions can’t even agree on what their respective functions are, isn’t that already a good explanation of why they send victims from office to office, without ever giving them adequate solutions?

The sub-secretary of Government, Police and Justice, Fortunato García notes that « Medellin has one million more in their budget than Cali » and proposes to create a « special committee » with members of each institution to make a definite agreement on the matter, as well as a committee to deal with the question of shelters. “What do we do in the mean time?” intervenes Martha Espinosa, director of the observatory on family violence. “We must take our responsibility now. Every day, children and women are suffering and police officers can’t always take them home. This has to stop immediately. We must take temporary measures while thinking of a long term solution.”

Deifan Arrechea from the Department of Territory Development and Social Wellbeing speaks up. “We have resources and plans to build ‘hogares de paso’” – shelters for children and women to stay for 8 days when ‘in crisis’. Yet 8 days is not enough. “Where do we send the kids after 8 days?” asks one of the participants. “We need to create permanent homes for the kids and have more shelters for women.”

Ironically, the meeting was held in the Department of Health, where 4 years ago, an employee was shot by her husband and died several hours later in the neighboring hospital. Full story to come…

Domestic homicide in the City's Department of Health

4 years ago, Enelia Garcia, an employee of the Department of Health,

was shot by her ex-husband in her office in front of the cafeteria.

A few days later, I met with Deifan Arrechea and Ana Cristina Hurtado, from the Department of Social Wellbeing. “For us, this meeting was a success! We finally got the decision-makers to come, sit down and recognize the problem. There is a culture of seeing domestic violence as a ‘private matter’, a ‘women’s problem’. We would love to make shelters that could receive more women for a longer time, but there just isn’t the political will or the resources. International pressure might motivate decision-makers to commit more to the issue!” The idea is indeed to put on pressure from the inside and the outside with campaigns of the women activists of Cali and IANSA’s Women’s Network.

For now, Deifan and Ana Cristina are planning to open a shelter to receive 50 women with 3 children each – for 8 days – to find stability, psychological and social assistance as well as a socio-economic contribution to help them become more independent.

Even the mere idea of a gun can have devastating consequences. Last week, Ana Maria* told her story to Martha Lucia, a lawyer at Asopropaz (an organization that assists victims of domestic violence), while I listened in. Her experience illustrates the ties between domestic violence, economic vulnerability, easy access to guns and cultural beliefs which define women as property.

“I’ve been living with him for 8 years,” she began. “I never went to the police because he always promised he wouldn’t do it again.” The two children they had together are 14 months and 6 years old, but her 14-year-old daughter from another relationship had to leave because he abused her sexually and beat her.

As she told her story, her baby girl was running around the office, smiling. Ana Maria’s head kept turning to check on her. “Last week, my baby got sick and I spent the night at the hospital with her. When we got back, he was angry because there was no meal ready for him. He beat me, only stopping because the kids were crying, but usually nothing stops him. Later, I told him, ‘either I’m going to leave, or you have to leave.’ When I said that, he raped me, beat me and told me I had to stay with him because I am his woman and I belong to him.”

When I asked about guns, Ana Maria shook her head and said that he had never owned or used a gun against her. I asked if he has access to a gun. “For sure,” she responded without hesitation.  ”He’s threatened me many times, telling me he can find one very easily, because his friends all have guns – he’s a taxi driver. He says he can get one and kill me, that it wouldn’t cost him a cent.” I asked her if her children are also aware of his ability to find a gun easily. “Of course,” she said. “They live in fear of him too.”

When she finally reported the crime, she was asked to bring proof. She didn’t have any, so the prosecutor made an appointment with both of them. To her distress, her husband denied everything and even accused her of being violent. Later, he took it out on her.

There are no shelters here. Victims of domestic violence are advised to live with family until they can find a place to stay. “I don’t have anywhere to go. My mother doesn’t have any room. We would all be sleeping on the floor, and he might find us there. He knows the place. He could come and hurt us, or kill us.”

Ana Maria almost didn’t come to her appointment with Martha Lucia because she didn’t have enough money for transportation. She does not work, and her husband keeps her locked up most of the time. She’s held jobs in the past, but had to quit or was fired, because she would arrive late feeling weak and covered with bruises or wounds. Sometimes she wasn’t able to come at all. She’s never had a chance to study, but when she tried to take courses at the university, he didn’t let her, because “he’s very jealous”.

Ana Maria’s husband feels that he can rightfully treat her as private property. Because she’s economically dependent on him and believes that he can easily access a gun, she can’t think of where to go and is too afraid to seek help — it’s a vicious circle of subjugation, violence, poverty and fear. It was Ana Maria’s sister who finally called Martha Lucia to make an appointment for her. Thousands of others like her never get even that way out.

*Name changed for her safety

The US administration has recently decided to allow foreign women with severe cases of domestic violence to be considered for asylum, according to the New York Times. This revolutionary stance was laid out in an immigration court filing for the case of a woman known as L.R., who was victim of armed domestic violence in Mexico.

Why is this change so revolutionary? Refugee law is very demanding: in addition to proving they have been unable to find protection in their home countries, women must prove a “well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.” Bush administration lawyers had argued in LR’s case that victims of domestic violence could not meet these standards, but the new administration went through what NYT calls a “legal odyssey” to find a social group that would apply.

In a court declaration, L.R., who fled to the US with her children in 2004, recounts her endless horror story. Her aggressor, from a very powerful family, began abusing her when she was a teenager. Over the years, he forced her to live with him, raped her at gunpoint, tried to burn her alive when she was pregnant and threatened to kill her family. The police did not help and a judge even tried to seduce her.

Her court declaration highlights the disempowerment and helplessness a woman feels when there’s a gun involved in domestic violence:

“He told my sister he had school business to talk about with me so we needed to be alone in another room. I did not want to go with him but he had a gun in his hand and flashed it at me. It was the first time he had a gun and it terrified me. When he had me alone in his room he pointed the gun at me and threatened to kill me if I did not have sex with him. (…) He told me would kill my sister’s baby first so the others could watch and then he would kill my sister and her 3 year-old if I did not comply with his demand. I was scared of him and he had the gun. He raped me. I was too embarrassed and afraid to tell my sister what had happened. (…) Afterwards, I waited to get on the bus to go to Mexico City with my final belongings. [He] grabbed me from the bus line and pointed the gun in his jacket. He made me come to his house, where he forced me to put on a baggy jacket so that he could hold the gun to me without anyone noticing. He then dragged me to a nearby pay phone and forced me to call my sister and tell her that I loved I [him] and that I was staying with him. He took me to his house and held me captive there for several years.”

Guns make it harder to escape

L.R.’s description of her utter despair and the lack of support from Mexican authorities reminds me of the stories I’ve been told in Colombia, which you will be hearing more of soon: “the police told me that it was a private matter and that my life was not in danger, so they could not help me.”

Ideally, women should be able to find sufficient support and protection in their own countries – which is what we are fighting for in this campaign. Nevertheless, I applaud this bold move that shows the world that domestic violence is not an issue to be slighted. By making this decision, the US government is implicitly supporting IANSA’s campaign and all the associations and actors who work daily in Colombia and around the world against domestic violence.

“An adaptor. All I need is an adaptor.” It’s getting dark, my body is aching, I’m feeling weak from hunger and fatigue and I’m making a racket with my suitcase rattling behind me on the metal footbridge at Canary Wharf, in London. People are giving me looks. I’m just hoping a shop with adaptors will magically appear in front of me, or perhaps more likely, an internet café, but everything is closed already. I look at my cell phone and realize that it’s already 8:34 and I’m supposed to meet Meijinder, who I’m staying with, in a half an hour. I had planned to sit in a café and write my first blog post for the fellowship training that starts tomorrow morning. Except that my computer ran out of juice. And, because London is only two hours away from Paris, I forgot that the British always have to remind everyone that they’re an island, even with their own “special” power outlets.

This summer, I’m going to Cali, Colombia as an Advocacy Project Peace Fellow to work with Colectivo Dignidad Humana, a member of the Women’s Network of IANSA, an international network of about 1000 civil society organizations working to reduce gun violence. A couple hours before my little hustle trying to find an adaptor, I am discovering the warm, friendly and busy IANSA headquarters in London a day before training starts. I have the privilege of sitting down for a quick briefing with the IANSA director, Rebecca Peters, who just travelled to Colombia a few weeks ago, and the Advocacy Project director Iain Guest.

Because NGOs in Colombia have been fixed on the war and opposition to Uribe, Colombia’s president, guns are only just becoming worth discussing in their own right, explains Rebecca. Many people don’t realize that the main cause of death in Colombia is not the war, but the use of guns in crime, including domestic violence. Statistics on the number of guns in Colombia and registered gun users are very hard to find, especially because the government considers guns a “military issue” deserving secrecy. As for domestic violence, there isn’t much reliable data either. Most victims don’t report it, for various reasons: they’re afraid, they don’t trust the police, they don’t know who to talk to or they think it’s a normal part of life. The general attitude is to treat domestic violence as a “private matter”.

IANSA headquarters

IANSA headquarters in London

I’m one of nine AP fellows helping IANSA launch a new campaign called “Disarming Domestic Violence”. My job will be to collect information, stories and anecdotes, make video-interviews, take pictures and publish press releases on armed domestic violence in Colombia, which is currently not very well documented. This blog is a central part of my fellowship and one of the key ways in which I will help disseminate the story of Colectivo Dignidad Humana.

Why is it important to start a campaign on armed domestic violence specifically? In the home, guns not only increase the chances that a woman will die, but they are used to subjugate, intimidate, threaten and sexually abuse women. Guns also make it much harder for a third person to intervene and for a woman to escape. “A woman can run away from a fist or a knife, but not a gunshot”, explains Sarah Masters, IANSA’s Women Network coordinator.

It’s now Thursday night. I never managed to find an adaptor, but I was able to write this post on Meijinder’s computer this morning just before training started. After a very full day of training, I’m exhausted again, but very happy and excited to work with such a great team of people at IANSA and AP.