Lubis, one of the leaders of the League who helped to build the City of Women [Julia Zulver/Al Jazeera]
Lubis, one of the leaders of the League who helped to build the City of Women [Julia Zulver/Al Jazeera]

Lubis is the owner of one of the 98 life-size, concrete realisations of those little cardboard houses and one of the leaders of the Liga de Mujeres Desplazadas (League of Displaced Women), the Colombian women’s group. The organisation’s efforts have built a community known as the City of Women, to restore the right to housing to some of its most vulnerable members and their families.

Based in the northern region of Bolivar, the Liga is a grassroots group run by and for women who are victims of the conflict between the government, right-wing paramilitaries, crime syndicates and leftist armed rebel groups, such as FARC, a battle that is still ongoing despite a peace process which began in 2012. The six-decade long conflict in Colombia has displaced more than six million people, hitting indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities in particular.

While most of the combatants in this war’s armed factions are men, more than 50 percent of those forcibly displaced by it are women. It is estimated that half of these have experienced sexual violence: perpetrated systematically mainly by paramilitary groups, but also by state forces and rebel groups. Continue reading “Colombia’s City of Women: The War Goes On”