Proceso de Comunidades Negras
Proceso de Comunidades Negras organizes Black, Afro-descendant, Palenquera, and Raizal communities throughout Colombia to combat discrimination and exclusion and to defend their rights.
Proceso de Comunidades Negras organizes Black, Afro-descendant, Palenquera, and Raizal communities throughout Colombia to combat discrimination and exclusion and to defend their rights.
Proceso de Comunidades Negras is a nationwide network consisting of over 140 grassroots Afro-descendant organizations and community councils. The group focuses on advocacy for the collective rights of Afro-descendant peoples and territories, and in particular for Black/Afro-descendant women.
With MADRE’s support, Proceso de Comunidades Negras fights for the rights of marginalized Colombian communities:
Raise awareness among the Black, Afro-Colombian, Raizal, and Palenquera communities in Colombia of their human rights
Protect ancestral territories and their natural resources
Defend the autonomy of Black, Afro-Colombian, Raizal, and Palenquera communities
Learn about women leaders of Proceso de Comunidades Negras in the book No Choice But to Resist.
The combatants in Colombia’s long war stoked conflict between Afro-descendent and Indigenous communities in Colombia, even as both suffered during the war. Militants used rape as a weapon to terrorize women and their entire communities and the country has a lack of government programs to meet the needs of survivors.
When Colombia’s government began forced eviction of the Afro-Colombian families living on the banks of the Cauca River, MADRE worked with Proceso de Comunidades Negras to demand they be resettled and rehoused with dignity and seek reparations and accountability.
View the campaignTogether with MADRE, Proceso de Comunidades worked to ensure the protection of the rights of women and girls in the implementation of Colombia’s landmark peace agreement in 2016. The group gathered testimonies and documented abuses in order to hold national and international policymakers accountable.
View the campaignWhen two Afro-Colombian human rights defenders, Sara Quiñonez and Tulia Maris Valencia, were arrested on unfounded charges and forced into prison, MADRE and Proceso de Comunidades Negras helped get them free and shined a spotlight on the disproportionate and violent persecution of Afro-Colombian human rights defenders.
Defending the defenders of human rights
“We do not have any other option but to resist”
Leyla Andrea Arroyo Muñoz Founding Member, Proceso de Comunidades Negras
MADRE and Proceso de Comunidades Negras met with US Congressional representatives to spotlight the crises faced by Afro-Colombian women.
We urged Congress to fund inclusive implementation of the Peace Accord, not failed and destructive Drug War policies.
We called for services and transitional justice processes for victims of sexual and gender-based violence in the country.
Your Support in Action
When decades of armed conflict came to an end in Colombia, the initial implementation of the Peace Accords threatened the lives and rights of Afro-Colombian and Indigenous Peoples, particularly women and girls. MADRE and our partner, Proceso de Comunidades Negras, brought grassroots leaders from these communities into the peace process through advocacy and organizing, ensuring their perspectives were included.
SUPPORT OUR WORKProceso de Comunidades Negras
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