Name: Liliany Obando
Where: Colombia
What she does: Colombian trade unionist, human rights defender and sociologist.
Impact: Has campaigned internationally to highlight human rights violations in Colombia.
Liliany Obando, was accused of “rebellion” and imprisoned on 8th August 2008. She has been detained since then in Buen Pastor Prison,Bogota, without being convicted of any crime. Before her arrest Ms. Obando had carried out research for Fensuagro, the Colombian union of agricultural workers, and campaigned internationally, mainly inAustralia and Canada, to highlight human rights violations committed by the Colombian authorities.
One Hundred Women 
Why are such courageous and powerful women “unseen”? Surely, it’s money. In Canada, it’s the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement. Liliany Obando’s advocacy on behalf of the peasant trade union movement and her criticism of the (violent) displacement of three million women and children from their homes and territories has earned her the enmity of the paramilitaries’ chief sponsor in crime, the Government of Colombia. Thus Liliany, a single mother of two children, has spent the last three years in arbitrary detention, isolated from other political prisoners, without any semblance of a trial, let alone a conviction. Yet Canada asserts that human rights in Colombia are improving. Beauty, truth, courage – why are these virtues most commonly found behind bars?
Liliany Obando has been a campaigner for labor and human rights for a quite long time. Her message for peace in her homeland needs wide support.
There is no military solution to the deep social and armed conflict in Colombia. The government of Juan Manuel Santos must open the doors for a political solution to the conflict. This necessarily needs to address a Humanitarian Exchange of political prisoners as a first step for reconciliation and peace with social justice.
There are more than 7,500 political prisoners in Colombia whose only crime has been a critical thinking and their demand for labor and human rights in Colombia.
Freedom for Liliany Obando unjustly held for more than three years.