By Anastasia Moloney
BOGOTA (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - They have received death threats, been forced from their homes, and live in the middle of drug turf wars, but nothing has stopped a Colombian women's rights group that is this year's recipient of a U.N. refugee agency award.
Based in Buenaventura, Colombia's main port city, the group's network of 120 volunteers - Butterflies with New Wings Building a Future – has been awarded the UNHCR's annual Nansen Refugee Award for helping 1,000 women who have suffered at the hands of warring factions in Colombia's 50-year war.
"Women who have been forcibly displaced and whose husbands and children have been killed or have disappeared are left unprotected. We help them, and those who've suffered sexual violence, to rebuild their lives and heal their trauma," said Mery Medina, one of three women from the Butterflies who will receive the award on behalf of the group in Geneva this month.
"We're fighting the indifference among communities and the state about violence against women," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation as she walked along a waterfront slum in Buenaventura.
Fighting such indifference is dangerous work in a city where armed gangs linked to former paramilitary groups impose a reign of terror on entire neighbourhoods as they fight for control of drug-smuggling routes, extortion rackets and illegal gold mines nestled in mountainous rainforest surrounding Buenaventura.
"There's fear in the city," said priest Jhon Reina, head of pastoral work at the diocese of Buenaventura. "The fear comes from showcase killings carried out by armed groups. Several women have told me they've heard the screams of people as they are cut up alive in chop-up houses. The dismembered body parts have appeared in the streets and sea."
REVENGE THROUGH RAPE
Women and girls living in the city's impoverished neighbourhoods are particular targets.
"Armed groups are using women's bodies to demonstrate their power and strength. They also seek revenge by raping or killing the girlfriend of a rival gang member," said Gloria Amparo, a veteran women's rights activist, who helped create the Butterflies network in 2010.
Such violence and fear has forced more than 50,000 people to flee their homes in Buenaventura in the past three years, according to official figures.
With 5.7 million people uprooted across the country, Colombia is second only to Syria in the number of internally displaced people, the UNHCR says.
Armed groups in Buenaventura are known to control many aspects of life in ways that are not visible at first glance.
Most residents - from street vendors to big businessmen - have to pay criminal gangs an illegal tax, known locally as a vaccine or vacuna. The city's "invisible borders" that divide gang territory, and unofficial curfews at sunset, dictate when and where people can walk safely.
"I've had to ask permission from armed groups to enter certain neighbourhood. When they tell me not to enter, I don't go in," said Amparo
Despite this, the Butterflies network has become a driving force in raising awareness about the high levels of violence against women in this city of 400,000.
They march the streets of Buenaventura shouting "No more abuse of women", organise vigils to mark the anniversary of the dead and missing, and hold sit-ins at the prosecutor's office to demand justice for crimes against women. They also help women report crimes of sexual or domestic abuse to authorities.
Their work attracts the attention of armed groups and puts the Butterflies network in the firing line.
"These women are doing extraordinary work in the most challenging of contexts," U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said in a statement. "Each day they seek to heal the wounds of the women and children of Buenaventura and in doing so put their own lives at risk."
The Butterflies plan to use the $100,000 UNHCR award to build Buenaventura's first refuge for abused women.
(Editing by Tim Pearce.)