Yolanda Becerra Vega

Yolanda Becerra Vega (born 1959) is a Colombian feminist and pacifist activist. She is the founder and currently the national director of the National Directorate of the Popular Women's Organization (; OFP), an entity created in 1972 in the Diocese's Pastoral Ministry, which in 1988 became an autonomous organization based in Barrancabermeja to support women in peaceful resistance against violence and defend peaceful dialogue. She is currently putting her efforts into establishing entities for women such as the construction of a Museum of Memory and Human Rights for Women and she also developed Women's Agendas for Territory and Peace.

During more than four decades in defense of women victims of the conflict in Barrancabermeja and Magdalena Medio, she has suffered persecution and siege by paramilitary groups and has been threatened with death on several occasions. The Office of the Attorney General itself denounced the plan of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia to assassinate her. The Popular Women's Organization and other social groups that opposed the violence were declared military targets and obligated to take forceful protection measures.

At age 20, when she finished high school, she began working as secretary of the parish of the northeastern sector of her hometown, and two years later she began to work in the Diocese's Social Pastoral Ministry, an environment especially influenced by liberation theology, and began on her path into the OFP. Becerra explained in an interview that she did not understand why women had to organize separately when strong social movements already existed. "It seemed like a waste and I had a big tantrum. Later I understood why it was important to have a women's organization," she said.

Quote|The women in Barrancabermeja–Magdalena Medio, we were going around in a pack. We were called and told: they are going to kill a person on that side; we got 100 women there and they had to give it up. We saved many people. It was the way to handle fear and to protect ourselves without being accomplices of death.|Yolanda Becerra in Humanas Colombia

In 2007 shortly after the Swedish government's announcement that she was being awarded the Per Anger Prize, she suffered an attack in her own home. 2009: Ginetta Sagan Award granted by Amnesty International in recognition of people who fight in defense of the human rights of women and children