The Movimiento Social de Mujeres contra la Guerra y por la Paz is a grass-roots movement for peace in Colombia, bringing together more than 40 organisations from across the country. These organisations, from different regions of the country, came together in 2006 to search for proposals to bring an end to the war and promote peace.
Objectives
The Movement has the following five principle objectives:
- To develop a common agenda at a local, regional and national level.
- To strengthen the peace process by creating mutual confidence and shared political understanding.
- To unite regional organisations towards a national project without losing the regional identity of each organisation.
- To strengthen the capacity for political advocacy on both an individual and collective level, and on a regional, national and international stage.
- To advance both individual and joint political proposals with the objective of finding remedies to the destruction caused by the war and to defending and promoting the rights of individuals and the different populations forming part of the movement.
Achievements
The Movement has created a mobile training school for the different organisations to improve their capacity for action, and has allowed the different organisations to come together to define and develop different activities.
One notable event organised by the movement was the International Meeting for Women and People Against Militarisation, which was held in Barrancabermeja in August 2010. The meeting brought together hundreds of organisations from Colombia and further afield for a week of sharing experiences and for a protest against the imposition of war outside a military base used by US troops.
The Movement is currently organising regional and national 'women’s courts' with the objective of documenting the consequences of social and armed conflict for Colombia’s women and, at the same time, seeking consensus for a regional program for peace proposed by women.
