Women in Colombia's Prisons

Colombian based human rights group Fundacion Comite Solidaridad con los Presos Politicos (CSPP) along with other local NGOs are organizing a campaign for the Rights and Dignity for Women Prisoners in Colombia. This project will be launched this upcoming June and attempts to bring national and international attention to the human rights violations and harsh living conditions faced by female prisoners in Colombia. Currently the country's prisons hold roughly 76,000 inmates, 6.3% of whom are women. It is not uncommon for these women to be put on trial and arrested for political purposes. The current administration serving under President Alvaro Uribe is determined to suppress active leftist guerrilla movements and the tactics used to do so put other non-violent opposition groups at risk.

One example of such a case is the arrest of Liliany Obando, a political prisoner who has been incarcerated for almost two years. She was arrested in front of her children in August of 2008, being accused of rebellion and eventually incriminated for allegedly raising money and assigning the funds to Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Obando is a well known trade unionist and documentary filmmaker who has contested all accusations put against her. However, the human rights violations against Obando did not stop at her arrest as she is now spending her time at Buen Pastor Prison for Women in Bogota, where reports of inhumane conditions and even torture are common.

There is another prison that has made headlines for its failing living conditions and reports of abuse. In order to legally place prominent female FARC member Omaira Rojas Cabrera into a high security (formerly only male) prison after her arrest in 2004, the government rounded up female prisoners around the country in the early hours of the morning and brought them to La Tramacua prison, without respect to what their sentences were for, nor even if they had yet been convicted of a crime. How are conditions at La Tramacua? Writing in Colombia’s El Mundo, Tatiana Cárdenas reports that "the inmates lack the minimum sanitary conditions...there is no water, the place is constantly surrounded with excrement from the same prisoners who...throw bags of their waste outside the prison and the lower floors." The situation became so drastic that in September of 2009, the Campaign for Labor Rights received an alert from women political prisoners at La Tramacua, telling them how in desperation over prison conditions, the prisoner Alexandra Correa had committed suicide.

It is important to view the problem of female incarceration as one that has been perpetrated by the years of violence and subsequent forced displacement by women and their families, most of whom are Indigenous. These women often have limited access to employment and other needed services for their families and are thus more vulnerable to rampant arrest and incarceration than other fellow citizens. MADRE has collaborated with our sister organizations to ensure that women receive needed support.