In requesting international accompaniment, the Community made the decision to raise its profile in order to protect itself. The founding of a peace community is a proactive strategy and the international presence is an additional ingredient. In addition, the request shows the desire of the Community that its history be documented not only for its own memory, but also for the outside world. Each time that we celebrate three months of resistance we do so in remembrance [of the victims], because they have offered their lives and did so choosing peaceful alternatives.

The theory of accompaniment
The experiences of other organizations like PBI demonstrate that international presence in a conflict region can diminish considerably the risks of the civilian population that has been converted into a military target by armed actors that consider them the collaborators of their adversaries. As explained in Unarmed Bodyguards by Liam Mahony and Luis Enrique Eguren, accompaniment literally personifies the international concern for human rights. It is a convincing and visible reminder to those who use violence that their actions won't go unnoticed. The premise of accompaniment is that there will be an international response to whatever violence is observed by the volunteer. That request carries the implicit threat of diplomatic or economic pressure; a pressure that the perpetrators of violence want to avoid. Therefore, all of our efforts focus on the prevention of attacks on those being accompanied.

Because of this, the armed actors and civilians in the conflict should have explicit knowledge of the physical presence of the international accompaniers as well as the support network that backs them up. The work therefore has two prongs: the physical presence of the volunteers and the political/diplomatic work that raises the visibility of the accompaniment as well as of the accompanied person.

Maintaining contact with officials
The volunteers and coordinating team of FOR-USA maintain direct and frequent contact with the Colombian civilian and military authorities in order to advise them of the international presence in the Community, inform them of how witnesses are faring, and to be able to listen to the government's analysis of the situation in Colombia and the community. These opinions are incorporated in our analyses of security and the political climate. We also advise these same officials about specific accompaniment tasks that differ from the norm. Additionally, the volunteers meet with the U.S. embassy and various other diplomatic representatives for the same reasons. In addition, relationships with international, national and local NGOs are extremely important for building internal solidarity networks and to jointly analyze and react to threats. We do not make direct contact with illegal actors.

The hope is that with a great visibility and higher level of international support we can open the political space for the very important work of the movements seeking justice and peace that does not exclude the poor and marginalized.