Greta Friedemann-Sánchez
Global Policy, Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
IAS Faculty Fellow, Fall 2020
From the Battlefield to the Home Front: Harmonizing Security Policies on Intimate Partner Violence in Post-Conflict Colombia
“Colombia will not be able to find political peace until it can have peace in the homes.” This statement, collected in 2016 during an interview while evaluating the implementation of Colombia’s laws addressing intimate partner violence, summarizes Colombia’s challenges and frames the research I have been conducting at the IAS this semester. Although it is increasingly known that intimate partner violence surges in post-conflict, Peace Accords and post-conflict security and development policies remain silent on the security and the human development needs of women suffering from war tactics perpetrated by their intimate partners in their homes. I have been exploring the following questions: why do states fail to synchronize policies addressing domestic and armed conflict violence? How can post-conflict security studies and the feminist fields addressing domestic violence converge so that nations emerging from conflict, their families, and women may live in peace? The first step in this project is to draft a paper making visible domestic terrorism: when the battlefield comes home.
Greta Friedemann-Sánchez is an Associate Professor at the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. She teaches courses on international development and qualitative methods. She has published on asset ownership by gender, caregiving labor, and intimate partner violence. Over the past three years, she had advocated for Colombian legal changes addressing domestic violence at the UN and in Colombia.
This series features an IAS Residential Fellow—a Faculty Fellow, Interdisciplinary Doctoral Fellow, or Community of Scholars Fellow. Each profile is written by the participant as a way to share their projects, goals, and experiences as part of their time at the IAS.