household,”560 and indicated that the notion of “intersectionality” applies to this group of victims, owing to the “many kinds of discrimination,” from a combination of causes that include “their displaced status, their gender, ethnicity, and condition as children.” 309. The Commission indicated that the life of the women has been severely affected, because they “have had to assume responsibility for the financial support of their families, to learn to acknowledge and solve their own problems in the world at large, when they have to go to the different State and private agencies to obtain the humanitarian assistance established by the laws on internal forced displacement, to participate in diverse organizations to claim their rights, and to manage complex spatial and cultural references that are different from those of their place of origin.” 310. Consequently, the Commission concluded that the State was internationally responsible for failing to comply with its obligation to ensure and respect rights without any discrimination and the right to equal protection before the law owing to the harm caused by Operation Genesis, the paramilitary incursions, and the subsequent forced displacement suffered by the Afro-descendant communities of Cacarica associated in CAVIDA, and by the women heads of household living in Turbo, in accordance with Article 22 in relation to Articles 1(1) and 24 of the American Convention. 311. The representatives indicated that “the status of the victims and their special world vision, which is expressed in their uses and customs, reveals the need for the legal analysis of this case to be undertaken from a differentiated perspective that recognizes this.” According to the representatives, the discrimination is revealed, first, by the failure to comply with the obligation to ensure the rights of all citizens in equal conditions, because the community was in a situation of vulnerability and discrimination owing to having been abandoned and suffered from lack of action by the State and, second, because of the measures taken by the State that placed the members of the community in inhuman and discriminatory situations that disregarded their cultural customs. 312. The representatives also maintained that, in Colombia, “racial discrimination attains levels that are a cause for concern.” They indicated that Afro-descendants are identified by the word “negro/a” (black), which is used “pejoratively” or in a “despective manner.” They also indicated that, in that context, “the members of the communities were labelled guerrillas, in order to justify the violence used against them and the displacement of which they were victim, generating feelings of guilt and criminalization in the collective conscience.” In addition, the representatives indicated that their “honor and reputation were adversely affected, because being categorized as a member of the guerrilla in [… Colombia], not only converts an individual into a military objective, but also distorts the image of that individual before the State and the population in general” in violation of Article 11(1) and 11(2) of the American Convention. 313. Lastly, the representatives affirmed that, “when the paramilitaries cut off the head of Marino López and took it like a trophy to a large flat area of the village where they exclaimed in front of the people ‘look, he’s got a monkey’s face, the son of a bitch,’ they harmed the honor and reputation not only of Marino López and his family, but also of all the members of the Afrodescendant communities.” 314. The State considered that it is not responsible for the “presumed violation of the right to equality” and indicated that in “these proceedings, sufficient evidence has been provided to prove that the emergency humanitarian aid to the displaced and the actions to ensure the 560 Regarding the women heads of household, the Commission affirmed that the “changes in roles and responsibilities arising from the displacement are fundamentally associatd with the need to guarante the basic needs of the families and with the opportunities they find to achieve this,” as a result of which “the displaced women have had to assume responsibility for the financial support of their families, to learn to acknowledge and solve their own problems in the world at large, when they have to go to the different State and private agencies to obtain humanitarian assistance,” among other activities. 105

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