On Monday, September 24th, 2018 a meeting took place with the winners of the "Antonio Nariño" human rights award from Colombia, jointly awarded by the German and French government.

The laureate NGO ‘Comisión Colombiana de Juristas’ legally represents cases of human rights violations concerning land restitution and victims of forced displacement in the areas most heavily affected by the conflict since 2014. An honorable mention was awarded to the NGO ‘Fundación por la Defensa de los Derechos Humanos y del Derecho Internacional Humanitario del Oriente y Centro de Colombia’ (DHOC), which works towards the implementation of protective mechanisms for human rights defenders and a comprehensive work with victims.

Representatives of both organizations were on a trip through Germany at the invitation of the Federal Foreign Office in order to get to know German institutions and organizations which work about similar topics. The trip was organized by the Goethe Institut and the LAI at the Freie Universität presented its current research projects about Human Rights, agrarian questions and Colombia’s internal conflict. For this purpose, representatives of the German Colombian Peace Institute CAPAZ, the Postgraduate Program on Sustainable Development and Social Inequalities in the Andean Region trAndeS and the BMBF junior research group ‘Global Change - Local Conflicts? Conflicts over land in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa in times of global transformation’ GLOCON were present.

The constructive climate of the meeting led to a lively exchange of ideas and experiences, which resulted in several concrete concepts for future collaborations between the representatives of the research projects and the Colombian NGOs.