Challenges for DDR in Colombia: Experiences of Former Girl-soldiers.

In the Colombian armed conflict, women represented between 40% and 50% of guerrilla ranks. Since 1999 until 2017 the DDR program in charge of the rehabilitation and reintegration for children lead by ICBF has attended around 1720 girls that disengaged from non-stated armed groups, from which 60% came from FARC. Keeping in mind that in 2016, the peace agreement between the government of Colombia and FARC was signed, the analysis of challenges in the reintegration processes of these girls, obtain relevance. Considering that the gender inequalities in the Colombian Society represent a structural violence that in many cases are the root causes that push girls to join the guerrilla groups, this research addresses to what extent the DDR Program for children lead by ICBF, managed to break the perpetuation of the sex/gender cultural system, based on the life trajectories of six former Colombian child combatants that were in the guerrilla groups and today have finished the ICBF program. The study will be grounded in ideas of post-conflict peacebuilding and DDR as a practice tool to peacebuilding. Also, insights of feminist theories such as the sex/gender system, intersectionality, gender stereotyping among others will be discussed to delimit the understanding of the structural violence based on gender to analyze the life-stories of the disengaged people.