WUNRN
Colombia - Rural Women's Development Fund
Hopes, Needs, Skepticism
By Helda Martínez
BOGOTA, Dec 15, 2010 (IPS) - "It sounds nice, but
it’ll be tough to implement"; "the most important thing is to
translate into reality": These statements by rural women leaders in
Colombia sum up the reaction of activists to the government’s decision to
revive and refinance a special fund for projects in the countryside led by
women.
The scepticism has deep roots in a country where the rural
population has been devastated by five decades of armed conflict, which has
displaced millions of small farmers, and where rural women are marginalised and
made invisible by a patriarchal system.
In addition, government projects aimed at supporting farmers
have typically ended up benefiting large landowners.
Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Juan Camilo
Restrepo announced that the government would allocate 850,000 dollars to rural
women’s initiatives in 2011, to begin redressing the neglect they have faced
from the state.
The funds will be channeled through the Rural Women’s
Development Fund (FOMMUR), which has been left without financing over the last
four years.
The funds aimed at bolstering women’s participation in
agriculture form part of a number of government initiatives, including the
creation or revival of programmes, aimed at developing the rural sector in
Colombia.
"The more than eight-year-old Law on Rural Women has
not even been codified yet," Restrepo complained. "Public policies to
benefit rural women lack institutional development and there is a lack of
coordination among the different state agencies involved," he added, in an
assessment in line with the complaints of associations of small women farmers.
"To make this change a reality, it is important to
take into account the fact that rural women face a number of disadvantages
characteristic of patriarchal societies," Yulieth Tamayo, a member of the
Colectivo de Mujeres Pazíficas, a group of women activists in the western
agricultural province of Valle del Cauca, told IPS.
One reflection of this "patriarchal society" is
that land is registered in the names of women’s husbands, fathers or brothers.
Another hurdle that disproportionately affects women is the
requirement that farmers wishing to obtain government funds or credit must
present a number of documents, for which they must travel to the nearest large
city, or "even to
To make opportunities for farmers more equally available to
women, "projects for cultural and educational changes, as well as
mechanisms for oversight of how funds are handled," are needed, she
argued.
"The announcement is fabulous, but they also have to
offer support and advice on how to best use the funds," said Ángela
Orozco, a farmer in Usme, a rural area at the southern edge of greater
Orozco, who comes from a peasant family displaced from the
northwestern
In the gardens surrounding her house, she grows uchuva
fruit (Cape gooseberry), onions, fennel, marigolds, beets, lettuce, cilantro
and camomile, for her family’s consumption and for sale in nearby farmers
markets.
And in Ciudad Bolívar, a poor neighbourhood strung along
the hills on the south side of the Colombian capital that is mainly home to
people displaced from rural areas by the civil war, she promotes the
cultivation of fresh produce in child care centres and preschools, where
children not only learn farming skills but grow food for their own meals.
Orozco believes that peasant farmers, especially women,
must be empowered to take on leadership roles, as the only way for them to
leave behind their longstanding neglect by the authorities and victimisation by
different armed groups.
Over the last half century, the rural population in this
South American nation has been largely abandoned by the state and has suffered
the effects of an armed conflict that has basically been waged in rural areas,
where the state security forces fight left-wing guerrillas.
But even before the emergence of the main insurgent group,
the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), in 1964, the countryside was
caught up in the violence between the conservative and liberal parties, and
later in the crossfire between not only the insurgents and the army, but also
far- right paramilitaries, drug cartels and traffickers of emeralds.
And one of the main objectives of the conflict has been
possession of land.
The result: one of the largest and most silent rural
exoduses in the recent history of the world. Since 1985, some 3.3 million
people in this country of 44 million have been forced off their land and
deprived of at least two million hectares.
In 1950, 70 percent of the population lived in rural areas,
compared to 26 percent -- 11.7 million people -- today, according to
projections based on the 2005 census.
But although women and girls represent over half of the
rural population (51 percent), "their significant contribution to the
national economy, and to the country’s food sovereignty in particular," is
ignored, says Infogénero, a local NGO that mobilises women peasant farmers in
defence of their rights and against machista and other kinds of violence.
Restrepo, who was named agriculture minister by President
Juan Manuel Santos, in office since August, said women must be taken into
account because of "their business sense, their sense of austerity, their
ability and inclination to save, and the priority they put on the needs of
their families."
He also underlined that women in general are better at
paying off loans, and "have a greater sense of community," which
means that protecting their economic and social rights has a valuable
multiplier effect.
But on her farm, Orozco, like other farmers, remains
sceptical. "Governments don’t care about peasants, which was proven by
what happened with the AIS: they left the peasant farmers without funds,"
she said.
She was referring to the scandal over the government's Agro
Ingreso Seguro (AIS –"stable farm income") programme, in which farm
subsidies and soft loans for farmers ended up in the hands of wealthy
landowners, under right-wing president Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010).
The ongoing investigation of the corruption scandal has
found that from 2007 to 2009, government funds allocated to large landowners
were 27 times greater than what went to peasant farmers, 70 percent of whom
live in poverty.
The beneficiaries of the AIS programme included
agribusiness producers of cut flowers, palm oil, bananas and sugar cane, and
transnational corporations like Coltabaco, Philip Morris’s affiliate in
"The AIS programme will now be at the service of small
and medium-size farmers," Minister Restrepo promised. "And we are
working hard to make micro-credit a tangible reality for the rural
sector."
He also predicted that "the big beneficiaries of this
refocusing (of government farm policies) will be young rural entrepreneurs, and
women who live and work in the country’s rural areas."