A string of attacks
Colombia, April 2026. A wave of attacks is rocking the southwestern part of the country as it counts down to the elections that will determine the new president for the 2026–2030 term (which began on March 8 with legislative elections and will conclude on May 31 with the presidential election—Ed.). In less than a week, over twenty bomb attacks have left fourteen dead and more than forty wounded. The most serious attack along the Pan-American Highway—a vital artery for domestic transportation—has paralyzed the logistics corridor, resulting in a tragic loss of life.
In this context, we spoke with Lucas Andrés Restrepo, a lawyer affiliated with the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), Mildred Ramírez, a journalist with the Alianza de Mujeres Tejedoras de Vida, and Claudia Mejía Duque, a lawyer and human rights defender. Their voices tell us how civil society is preparing for the elections, as well as their hopes, expectations, and the paths forward. For peace.
The risk to the continuity of the JEP
Lucas Andrés Restrepo, a lawyer affiliated with the JEP—the body tasked with investigating and punishing crimes committed during the conflict in Colombia—and a professor in Cauca, was recently stranded in the tunnel along the Popayán-Cali highway (Pan-American Highway), just a few meters from the site of that attack. For him, this is yet another real and tangible example of the many obstacles institutions face in their attempt to implement the peace agreements (signed in 2016 between the state and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-EP, ed.) amid a persistent and localized armed conflict. For Restrepo, the JEP faces a major risk with the rise of right-wing figures such as Paloma Valencia or Abelardo de la Espriella, especially since its investigations expose the leadership of the military and the state to the law. Since it lacks a majority in Congress to abolish the Jurisdiction, the real danger lies in administrative sabotage aimed at underfunding it, blocking access to classified archives, and undermining the reintegration conditions for signatories (former guerrillas). And if reintegration fails, he says, the process is distorted, and the JEP would end up devoting itself exclusively to defending itself on an institutional level, rather than delivering restorative justice. On the contrary, he says, in the face of a possible government led by Iván Cepeda (a senator from the Pacto Histórico, the governing coalition led by current President Gustavo Petro and a presidential candidate—ed.), the JEP’s challenge would be to redesign “Paz Total” within the framework of a “human” security policy that restores state control in territories where the state left a vacuum after the FARC’s withdrawal, allowing justice to operate in areas currently controlled by dissident and paramilitary groups. Furthermore, Restrepo emphasizes the need for the Constitutional Court to limit the JEP’s “jurisprudential creativity,” preventing interpretive rulings from altering the original spirit of the Agreement. Finally, the JEP’s lawyer stresses that this potential government should strengthen bilateral international alliances,
particularly with the European Union, Spain, and Italy, to ensure funding for reparatory measures and accelerate the implementation of comprehensive agrarian reform.
Journalism in Putumayo
In the southern part of the country, in the department of Putumayo, information management poses an operational risk that affects journalistic practice. Mildred Ramírez, a communicator with the Alianza de Mujeres Tejedoras de Vida, an organization allied with COSPE, warns that the centralist “infodemic” reduces the complexity of the region to metrics of illicit crops, rendering invisible the dynamics of conflict and state neglect that persist in the area. Faced with this information vacuum, Ramírez promotes situated journalism that prioritizes the self-protection of sources and makes visible the processes of resistance and peacebuilding led by women’s organizations. In this part of the country, the Alianza de Mujeres Tejedoras de Vida challenges the official narrative. Mildred recounts how women resist amidst illegal economies and state neglect that seems the result of a deliberate plan rather than an accident. Here, the stakes are so high that mentioning that a victim was the sister of a leader can condemn an entire family to death. From this ethic emerges a form of journalism rooted in collective self-protection that seeks to reframe the narrative and demonstrate that legal economic alternatives and women-led peacebuilding exist—realities the country’s center refuses to acknowledge. This fragmentation highlights that while centers of power disseminate information focused on a few regions, the realities of the rest of the country remain marginalized in the national discourse. Faced with this void and the historical failures of governments—both left and right—women have chosen autonomy, choosing themselves and their grassroots work as the only solid response to a political system that, regardless of ideology, has let them down.
The Feminist Agenda in Colombia
This election campaign has revealed a deep divide in the way women are viewed within the national project. Claudia Mejía Duque, a lawyer and human rights defender, warns that Colombia faces the risk of a historic setback fueled by the “Trump doctrine.” This global resurgence of the far right not only threatens reproductive autonomy but also legitimizes a patriarchal logic of violence aimed at “crushing” the opponent.
The feminist movement has launched the 2026–2030 Agenda: Horizon of Equality. The proposal is radical and calls for a shift from a state that views women as “beneficiaries” of domestic subsidies to one in which they are full-fledged political actors. This implies a new paradigm of feminist security. According to Claudia, it is a matter of understanding that there will be no public security as long as gender-based violence continues to be the norm in the private sphere. Feminist security places the sustainability of life and environmental care above traditional militaristic sovereignty.
Areas under threat
Colombia is heading toward the presidential elections on May 31, 2026, amid a critical security situation. According to the Indepaz Observatory, the country recorded 35 massacres and 94 fatalities in the first quarter of the year, representing a 32% increase in lethal violence compared to the previous period. These figures align with warnings from the Defensoría del Pueblo, which identifies a concentration of violence in 34 municipalities in the southwest, where a sustained offensive against law enforcement has been reported.
In the past week alone, between April 20 and 27, the escalation of terrorist activity has reinforced the picture of extreme risk to the democratic process.
Overcoming this crisis requires a paradigm shift that addresses the region’s urgent challenges: moving from a centralist information bias to a locally grounded journalism that safeguards local truths, and from militaristic security to feminist security that guarantees safety in the private sphere. The challenge for 2026 is to recognize that there will be no democratic stability as long as information remains a risk factor and the protection of women continues to be a marginal issue on the national agenda.