Colombia: Women Searchers Needs Protection

Yanette Bautista is the sister of Nydia Erika Bautista, who was forcibly disappeared by the XX Brigade of the Colombian National Army on August 30, 1987. With other family members and after years of fighting against impunity and searching for her sister and aunt, as well as many other victims of forced disappearance in the country, they created the Nydia Erika Bautista Foundation (Fundación Nydia Erika Bautista, FNEB). 

FNEB was born when Yanette and her family were forced into exile because of the threats and attacks they received due to their work in the struggle for the rights of victims of enforced disappearance and those who search for them. In Geneva (Switzerland), in 1999, a group of human rights defenders from Germany, Switzerland, Colombia and Mexico met during their advocacy work with the United Nations and decided to form an organization named in honor of Nydia Erika Bautista. Over the years, the Bautista family decided to return to Colombia and in 2007 formally established FNEB in the country as an organization of victims of enforced disappearance and sexual violence that accompanies other victims in the same condition as its members. It has two marked identity characteristics. First, they are determined by the historical experience of the struggle for truth and justice for Nydia Erika Bautista and, therefore, they consider themselves an organization of relatives of victims of enforced disappearance. Second, it is formed mostly by women, and they fight for the rights to equality and to live a life free of violence, therefore they also consider themselves a women's organization. Today, with legal support, documentation, memory and communications, advocacy and research, administration and the Leadership School, FNEB directly supports victims from different parts of Colombia in 519 cases and carries out actions to promote the rights of victims of forced disappearance and, especially, of women searchers. Thanks to its initiative and impetus, Law 2364 of 2024 was issued, designed to protect a wide range of rights of women searchers in the country and built through their experience, documented by FNEB for years.

Amnesty International has followed FNEB situation and the enforced disappearance of Nydia Erika Bautista for years and has received extensive information on risks, threats and attacks they face. Recent events are not only the repetition of similar acts against them, but also, warnings of the possible scalation of violence against FNEB and other women searching for victims of enforced disappearance. Meanwhile, the Colombian Congress passed in July 2024 a bill enacting protections for the rights of women searchers in the country. The promises included in that law need to take the form of actions directed at improving their lives, these include investigating the threats and attacks they receive.