Internally displaced women as knowledge producers and users in humanitarian action: the view from Colombia

Abstract

The literature on evidence-based action in humanitarian crises commonly focuses on how inter-and non-governmental organisations can produce better knowledge and how this can be translated into improved programming. Yet, there is little recorded experience of, or concern about, how the beneficiaries of humanitarian relief can produce and use knowledge of their predicament. This paper is based on a case study of how the Liga de Mujeres Desplazadas, an internally displaced women's organisation in northern Colombia, employs proactively research-generated data to advance its own agenda in its interactions with donor bodies and the government. The paper finds that beneficiaries of humanitarian aid can, and do, use participatory research to advance their own ends in the legal and political spaces created around humanitarian crisis. However, their agency is limited by poverty, violence, and local balances of power. The paper concludes that beneficiaries' priorities in the production of data about humanitarian crises warrant further study.

Leaders against all odds: Women victims of conflict in Colombia

“…All are IDPs and most of them live in very basic conditions, in violence-prone urban neighbourhoods where prospects for proper reintegration are poor. Bogotá's slums are riddled with invisible boundaries (Sandvick and Lemaitre, 2013 andpersonal interviews, 2015) and no-go zones where random violence is commonplace (two of the WVCs had family members who were killed for unknown reasons) and where daily existence is precarious, because of hazardous roads, poor infrastructure, hilly surroundings and/or little or no state presence. Potrero Table 2 | Leaders' main traits and motivations Largo's urban landscape may seem safer, but overcrowding and domestic and street violence are very common there.…”

“…Experiences of war violence are often highly correlated with greater levels of social capital, community engagement and peaceful political engagement (Wood, 2003). Moreover, women's positions and roles tend to change and evolve during conflict, as shown by Viterna (2013) in El Salvador and by Sandvick and Lemaitre (2013) in Colombia. In some cases, conflict has been shown to offer a window of opportunity for the empowerment of women (Bouta and Frerks, 2001;Batliwala et al, 2002and DIIS, 2008and personal interviews, 2015.…”

Theorizing Business and Local Peacebuilding Through the “Footprints of Peace” Coffee Project in Rural Colombia

“…This allowed FOP to remain flexible enough to vary its local teachings at the municipality level, while retaining a sense of overall project coherence to enable comparative progress. Also, interviewees felt that the focus on women as community implementing agents increased FOP's effectiveness, correlating positively with other community projects in rural Colombia (Sandvik & Lemaitre, 2013). That said, defining success through peacebuilding "efficiency" is hard to assess.…”

Beyond Sexual Violence in Transitional Justice: Political Insecurity as a Gendered Harm

“…IDPs in general also suffer discrimination in access to government services such as education and health care. One reason is their suspected political affiliations: they are imagined to be guerrilla collaborators, informants for the paramilitaries, or participants in the drug trade (Sandvik and Lemaitre 2013). Moreover, few IDPs belong to any type of organisation, and levels of legal literacy about the constitutionally granted rights they possess as citizens are low (Comisión de Seguimiento 2008;Petesch and Gray 2009).…”