This report deals with politically motivated violence against women in Colombia. The appallingly high level of serious human rights violations in Colombia has come about against a backdrop of violent conflict between armed opposition groups and the state. While women are not the principal targets of human rights violations, they have suffered frequent and persistent abuses by the armed forces, paramilitaries and armed opposition groups, particularly in rural areas. The violence in Colombia has meant that many people have had to leave their homes in the country and flee to cities: women are the principal victims of this internal displacement. In the cities, female prostitutes, some young girls, are in danger of being killed by urban “death squads”, who class them as “social undesirables”.
