BUILDING PEACE IN A COUNTRY AT WAR

for those in the Greater Cleveland area:

BUILDING PEACE IN A COUNTRY AT WAR

Colombian Catholic Priest Father Jesús Alberto Franco will talk on his two decades of Human Rights Work in the midst of Colombia’s Civil War

Wednesday November 17th 7 PM Jardine Room Lombardo Student Center

Father Jesús Alberto Franco is a renowned leader in the Colombian human rights movement. He is a Colombian missionary priest, as well as the executive secretary of Inter-church Justice and Peace Commission, a 22 year-old Colombian human rights and community organizing group. For over 20 years, Fr. Alberto has worked for human rights and accompanying the resistance processes of Afro-Colombian, indigenous and mixed race farmers.

He has been a featured speaker in the Global Counsel of Churches at the United Nations in 2009, the Alternative Network to Globalization and Impunity in Spain 2008, the Public Trial of the Movement of Victims of State Crimes and a session for the Ethics Commission for Truth in France 2008. In 2009, he was a featured speaker in the School of the Americas vigil at Ft. Benning. Additionally, in 2007 and 2008 he testified before the European Parliament and the European Commission.

The Inter-Church Justice and Peace Commission campaigns on behalf of civilian communities in conflict regions in Colombia, whose members have been killed, tortured or forced to flee from their homes by the security forces and paramilitary groups. Many of these communities have also been targeted by guerrilla groups.

The Commission has been supporting the cause of the Afro-descendant and Indigenous communities living in areas where paramilitaries have occupied the land of some Afro-descendent communities and have attempted to force the Afro-descendant communities to grow plantations of African Palm, a cash crop used in products ranging from cooking oil to soap and where powerful mining interests are trying to develop operations.

Their human rights work with these communities and on important cases of impunity against senior members of the security forces has made them target of multiple death threats and attacks.


SPONSORED BY THE JOHN CARROLL PROGRAM IN PEACE, JUSTICE, & HUMAN RIGHTS
Free and Open to the Public