Colombia Women's Rights Group Wins U.N. Award As Risks Lives For Victims
Wow. These are some brave women!
Colombia Women's Rights Group Wins U.N. Award As Risks Lives For Victims
By Anastasia Moloney
Sep. 12, 2014
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....
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/r-colombia-womens-rights-group-wins-un-award-as-risks-lives-for-victims-2014-9#ixzz3D8oJBwzK
