As we bid farewell to 2019 and commence a new decade, we take this opportunity to reflect on the past year and look ahead to a defiant future. It is a time to recognize the achievements and challenges of 2019 and consider the lessons we learned through our experience and research to help us work better in the future.

Fifteen years ago, a young nurse named Cristina Cobo was forcibly disappeared by members of the paramilitary group United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia. Paulina Mahecha, her mother, preserves her memory and that of over 20 other disappeared women from the departments of Meta and Guaviare by creating rag dolls. The "Cristinas of the Conflict," as Paulina calls them, are now part of a traveling exhibition that aims raise awareness in Colombia about what happened in the south of the country. 

On Monday, April 1, 2019, ICTJ found its way back to the Ford Foundation, this time to celebrate Alex Boraines’s life and reaffirm the mission that ICTJ continues to carry out in his absence. Friends, family, and former colleagues joined together to remember Alex, recalling stories of his time on South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, teaching at New York University, and being a father to his sons and a husband to his wife Jenny.