Peace Week in Bogotá

 

The El Tintal library stands on a former sanitary landfill. The generously proportioned building of reinforced concrete allows those outside see the interior through enormous porthole windows. The library is an oasis of culture in the poverty-stricken south of the Colombian capital. Crowds of children and teenagers from neighboring housing projects visit the reading rooms and attend workshops and film showings every day.

The Peace Counts exhibit "Peacebuilders Around the World" was on display September 7-9, just to the right of the reception area. The Institute for Peace Education Tübingen (ift) offered a week of workshops on the Peace Counts project bodyand conflict resolution in cooperation with women's, students', and human rights organizations.

Exhibition coordinator Tilman Wörtz presented the project at a number of events during the "Week of Peace" including at the annual meeting of the city?s commission on human rights, in the mountain village  and reputed guerrilla stronghold Sumapaz, and in conjunction with the "March Against Fear" regularly conducted by young people in the poor neighborhood of Potosí to protest intimidation efforts by increasingly influential paramilitary militias.

The high point of the two-week visit was the presentation of the exhibition on Seventh Avenue in downtown Bogotá. Each Friday, the avenue it becomes a pedestrian zone and a forum for citizens' initiatives along with street musicians and mimes.

Co-sponsor of the stop in Bogotá was the aid organization Brot für die Welt and four of its Colombian partner organizations. Colombia was the seventh stop for Peace Counts on Tour, and the third in cooperation with Bread for the World. In May, the project received the Peter Becker Award For Peace and Conflict Studies of the University of Marburg.