The struggle for gendered peace and LGBT rights in Colombia

In the midst of armed conflict, Colombia has managed to become a pioneer in the implementation both of LGBT rights and of women’s agency in peacebuilding. This paper traces the debate around the 2016 peace agreement back through decades of interrelated struggles for democracy, peace, and women’s and LGBT rights. Given that the twists and turns of Colombia’s complex history of peace and conflict have been consistently unpredictable and sometimes paradoxical, how best might the achievements of recent years be interpreted? This paper argues, on the one hand, that there has been a significant aggregate impact from long-term efforts to locate gender-based violence within the frame of armed conflict and to articulate coherent strategies for change. It finds, on the other, that specific social conditions such as the rise of an urban middle class facilitated uneven co-constitutive processes of agenda-setting that involved diverse local, national, and international actors. By outlining both the long process of agenda-setting and also the seizing of intermittent discursive opportunities amidst ongoing violence, this paper feeds into debates in gender studies, peace research, norm diffusion research, and social movement studies