Women-led organisations and feminist foreign policy in Colombia

Women’s movements and women-led organisations (WLOs) in Colombia have been internationally recognised for their significant contributions to peacebuilding, particularly the tireless work on the inclusion of women’s needs and gender perspectives in the 2016 peace agreement signed by the Colombian government and the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias (FARC). WLOs receive less recognition, however, for their work as humanitarian actors, despite their significant contributions, especially in the health and protection sectors, to highlighting and responding to the humanitarian needs of affected populations and defending women’s rights within the context of displacement, migration and crisis. The contributions of WLOs in the development of Colombia’s feminist foreign policy (FFP) have led to reforms in the legal framework, impacting the creation of laws, rulings and governmental responses to humanitarian needs in Colombia. By bridging the nexus of humanitarian, peace and development work, WLOs have made significant contributions both to the advancement of a participatory and inclusive National Action Plan for Resolution 1325, and have co-created participatory mechanisms for implementation and monitoring of the Colombian FFP with government.

The Colombia context provides a template of a diverse, intersectional and inclusive co-creation processes for foreign policy development through participatory dialogue between government and civil society, successfully reconciling different perspectives between the national government and WLOs. The work of Colombian WLOs within international spaces of multilateral advocacy has been essential to this agenda, and led to the adoption of a mechanism for WLOs to participate in Colombian government delegations at international forums in March 2024. The challenges and opportunities in the Colombia context require the application of a triple nexus (i.e., humanitarian, peace and development) vision to combine the agendas of peace and security; response to migration, displacement and disaster; and development. Colombia has one of the largest internal displacement contexts in the world, with 6.8 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) and returnees, and a refugee influx from the Venezuela crisis of almost 3 million people, as part of much larger mixed migratory flows. Together, the triple nexus context presents the opportunity for coordinated and comprehensive actions in the form of FFP.

Feminist foreign policy in Colombia

Colombia’s feminist foreign policy is composed of five pillars: Social Justice; Environmental Justice; Total Peace; Education, Science and Culture; and Social Transformation and Institutional Strengthening. Connecting these pillars through the core principle of intersectionality, the policy specifies that gender cannot be understood in isolation from or privileged over other social categories. It aims to include population diversity as well as intersections between gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, and other identities. The pillars cover the following:

• The ‘Social Justice’ pillar aims to foster global human security and social justice, transforming political and social structures, promoting equitable representation in international decisions, and gender equality.
• The ‘Environmental Justice’ pillar includes advocating for equitable ecological protection, ensuring the participation of women and vulnerable communities, and implementing climate and conservation strategies that respect the specific needs of these communities.
• The ‘Total Peace’ pillar incorporates an intersectional approach in promoting peace and security, recognising unique experiences related to gender, ethnicity and other identities, addressing gender-based violence, and developing international policies sensitive to these intersections.
• The ‘Education, Science and Culture’ pillar aims to promote equal access to education and participation in science and culture. It includes intersectional perspectives in the development of artificial intelligence and fosters inclusion in scientific and cultural activities.
• Finally, the ‘Social Transformation and Institutional Strengthening’ pillar focuses on transformative change in social norms and attitudes that perpetuate gender inequality and discrimination, and enhancing the capacity of institutions to effectively address gender issues and mainstream gender perspectives into policies and programmes.

The FFP was presented at the 68th annual Commission on the Status of Women (CSW 68) in March 2024 as an evolving document that seeks to reduce and eliminate structural gender gaps and inequalities by mainstreaming the transformative gender perspective, protecting the human rights of women and girls, as well as lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer/questioning, intersex (LGBTQI+) individuals, and recognising intersectionality in different areas of foreign policy.

WLOs as FFP advocates

WLO alliances have employed various strategies in promoting feminist policy agendas in Colombia, spanning collective advocacy, participation in government bodies to provide technical support and lobby for policy changes, strategic litigation, and international diplomacy. WLOs have the potential to positively impact the development of public policies, due to the expertise, institutional memory and multifaceted profiles of WLOs working as humanitarian actors, peacemakers, and campaigners for social transformation. The increasing representation of feminists with extensive experience in governance and public policies in the Vice-Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the work of WLOs with these government stakeholders to include a feminist foreign policy in the current government’s National Development Plan, is a case in point. Cooperation between WLOs through an alliance, ‘Encuentro Internacional de Diplomacia Feminista por La Paz’ (Feminist Diplomacy for Peace), provided an agile framework for WLOs to collectively engage with the Vice-Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Vice-Ministry led the adoption of a feminist foreign policy by the government of Colombia in 2022, as a strategy to boost women’s rights on the national and international agenda, and to address gaps in implementation at the state level of government commitments to the rights of women and girls in all their diversity throughout the country.

Restructuring within government since 2022 has resulted in the delegation of responsibility for FFP to a new team, which is now working with women’s organisations to initiate a co-creation exercise for policy implementation. Eighteen WLOs and LGBTQI+ representatives have participated in this dialogue, along with collectives of women scientists, women athletes, and members of the Feminist Diplomacy for Peace alliance. This collaboration between government and WLOs has collectively defined goals, themes, outcomes and actions of the FFP, and perhaps most importantly, progressed to the design of a participatory mechanism for implementation and monitoring co-owned by government and civil society. This is an essential step towards the institutionalisation of the policy to ensure its continuity beyond the agenda of the current government. Additionally, the active and consistent participation of women’s movements and WLOs in monitoring and implementation is a platform from which WLOs can engage with future governments on policy issues. In the meantime, WLOs intend to leverage the FFP to promote strategic discussions among international, national and local nexus actors responding to affected populations in Colombia.

WLOs and FFP implementation

The success of WLO engagement with the development – and planned implementation and monitoring – of Colombia’s feminist foreign policy raises a broader question of the differentiation between feminist approaches to domestic and foreign policy in Colombia. Participatory dialogue between government representatives and WLOs on implementation of the FFP must now be utilised as a forum for discussion of domestic policy implementation with other ministries and departments. The objective for WLOs is adoption of public policies consistent with comprehensive protection of the rights of women and girls in all their diversity, throughout the Colombian government. In order to achieve this, WLOs see three areas of work related to the FFP framework: implementing foreign policy actions in the region, e.g. drafting transnational protocols and agreements to address specific risks of trafficking and migration with regard to sexual exploitation and gender-based violence; internal operational actions of the Vice-Ministry of Foreign Affairs to promote greater participation of women in the diplomatic corps, strengthening human rights-based, feminist and intersectional approaches, et al.; and achieving coherence between a feminist international vision and a feminist vision within the internal state structure. This last area is not incorporated within the official axes of work developed by the Vice-Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and is led by WLOs in coordination with the other two action areas. The feminist principles promoted by the FFP must be mainstreamed into national and local state responses, and WLOs will continue to lobby for this workstream to be included in the official agenda of the FFP.

In order to advance this work, WLOs are building transnational roadmaps with WLOs in countries that have FFPs, and collaborating with those in neighbouring countries working towards adoption of feminist public policy. Within Colombia, the continuous participation of WLOs in FFP implementation and decision-making is essential to opening up spaces for women’s movements and civil society participation in other state structures. WLOs are leveraging their participation in planning, decision-making and accountability exercises with the Vice-Ministry of Foreign Affairs in order to explore participation in domestic policy structures. The work of WLOs in humanitarian response is a key entry point to line ministries coordinating with humanitarian sectors, particularly the Ministry of Health.

While development of the action plan for implementing of the FFP is in its initial stages, it is clear that significant resources will be required in order for WLOs to engage consistently and effectively in the process moving forward. The challenge of co-designing viable and strategic actions that give life to the policy and establish the foundations for subsequent phases to be developed in the next government (2026) require dedicated personnel and strategic planning across WLO alliances, followed by monitoring of implementation and progress. WLOs’ ongoing work to strengthen the current document and action plan and their contributions to the conceptualisation of feminist approaches with other state bodies is essential. Finally, WLOs will continue to advocate for the FFP to directly address the triple nexus characterising current conditions in Colombia, strengthening and resourcing state initiatives and responses, in partnership with humanitarian action organisations including WLOs.

Conclusion

The FFP process in Colombia has brought together WLOs working across different sectors to devise joint solutions to humanitarian needs and complex social phenomena. The creation of space for listening to WLOs by the Vice-Ministry of Foreign Affairs, along with the commitment shown to reflection and collective decision-making, stands as an example of good practice that could be expanded within government structures in Colombia and in the wider region.

However, while the Vice-Ministry of Foreign Affairs has committed to seeking resources for the FFP implementation during the current government, this does not include the staff and organisational costs of vital WLO contributions to the process. This funding shortfall is exacerbated by limited humanitarian funding streams in the Latin America region and limited funding support for women’s movements. As such, the FFP also needs to include concrete actions to fund the work of civil society partners to the FFP, and more broadly, to promote flexible and multi-year funding for WLO policy implementation in Colombia.

Erika Veloza Martinez is the Director of Fundación para el desarrollo en Género y Familia (GENFAMI) in Colombia.