Peace in the City: As Colombia Peace Talks Advance, Citizens Build Peace in Medellin (3/6)

Sonia Ines Goéz Orrego is the executive director of CEDECIS, a dynamic community organization working in some of the most violent areas of Medellín. With two decades of experience in community organizing and building a culture of peace, she can show how people have come together to prevent forced recruitment of young people by gangs, paramilitary and guerrilla organizations, to train children and adolescents in nonviolence, and to build more resilient and peaceful communities.

CEDECIS’s experience is especially relevant today as the Colombian government and FARC guerrillas are advancing steadily in peace negotiations in Havana, Cuba, that would end the Western Hemisphere’s longest running conflict. Yet as talks move forward, communities like those CEDECIS serves are still caught in conflict. Moreover, if an accord is signed, it will still be up to local communities to construct a lasting peace on the ground.

Ms. Goéz is a lawyer, teacher and community organizer. She has helped create strategies to prevent forced recruitment and free children and young people from armed groups, has assisted communities of displaced people to receive social services and exercise their rights, and has pioneered programs to build a culture of peace. She has a teaching degree as well as a law degree from the Fundación Universitaria Luis Amigo. Ms. Goéz is also a representative of the Coordinación Colombia Europa Estados Unidos (CCEEUU), the main network of some 245 Colombian human rights and nongovernmental organizations.

Organized by the Latin America Working Group and Colombia Human Rights Committee

Sponsored by: Modern Languages, Linguistics, and Intercultural Communication; Global Studies; PhD in Language, Literacy, and Culture.