This year, to celebrate UN Day, we decided to make an alliance with the “Costurero de la Memoria”, a group of Colombian women, victims of the armed conflict. They sewed 17 tapestries representing
their vision of each of the SDGs. Their work was exhibited for a month on the façade of the Center for Memory, Peace and Reconciliation in Bogota.
Each piece of cloth in these tapestries represents the fragments of a country divided by war. Human stories sewn with single-handed precision, which break the silence in post-conflict Colombia.
This book presents and illustrates the stories of a group of women who have decided to remember and forgive. Stories filled with color and nuances, stories of empowered women who transform the
world around them by promoting and implementing the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The final result shows their commitment, and that of the many partners who made this project possible, from young actors of change to government and private sector partners –a work that could
have only been achieved #TOGETHER. It is the symbol a strong, resilient and sustainable Colombia, of a country that has chosen tolerance and reconciliation to build its future.
The Costurero project is part of the transition from a culture of war to a culture of peace. Let us hope that their example may inspire many women in Colombia and across the world to use their art to promote peace and to reinvent a future #TOGETHER.
It is time to embroider new times of peace. This has always been the purpose and direction of the UN System in Colombia, and through this work, we are keeping that promise.
Hélène Papper
Director – UNIC Colombia