soldiers1

I escaped one day during the day. I had left all my weapons behind. I was on guard
duty and I snuck away. They caught me after an hour. The militia recognized me,
even though I had changed into civilian clothes. I cried when they caught me. I
begged them to let me go. They chained me up with a metal chain. I couldn't move
my arms. At the war council, I wasn't allowed to talk. But luckily, they voted not to
kill me. Instead, they made me dig twenty meters of trenches, make twenty trips to
get wood, and ordered me tied to a pole for two weeks. I had to give a talk in front
of everyone explaining why I had tried to desert, why I had made this mistake.

Adriana, the reluctant child guerrilla who told us this story, was lucky. The
guerrilla war council chose not to order her execution. The paramilitaries who
later caught her in combat spared her life and handed her over to the Colombian
army. Adriana was given a place in a government rehabilitation program.
But apart from that good fortune, Adriana's story is typical. Her mother and
brothers scratched out a living growing bananas and yucca, frequently falling
sick. Adriana dropped out of school in first grade to work in the fields. Her
parents fought constantly. Her mother often hit her. Friendly with the guerrillas,
Adriana's grandmother persuaded her to join them. Adriana was twelve.
All of the irregular armed forces in Colombia's decades-old armed
conflict--left-wing guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries--recruit children of
Adriana's age, and even younger. Under the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the
Convention on the Rights of the Child, children under the age of fifteen may not
take part in warfare. The Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the
Child raises the age limit to eighteen. It prohibits the compulsory military
recruitment of children under the age of eighteen and establishes that "armed
groups that are distinct from the armed forces of a State should not, under any
circumstances, recruit or use in hostilities persons under the age of eighteen
years." (Consistent with international legal standards, the word "children" in this
report refers to persons under the age of eighteen.)
At least one of every four irregular combatants in Colombia's civil war is under
eighteen years old. These children, mostly from poor families, fight an adult war.
Often, child combatants have only the barest understanding of its purpose. They
At least one of every four irregular combatants in Colombia's civil war is under
eighteen years old.
fight against other children whose background is very similar to their own, and
whose economic situation and future prospects are equally bleak. With much in
common in civilian life, children become the bitterest of enemies in war.
From the beginning of their training, both guerrilla and paramilitary child recruits
are taught to treat the other side's fighters or sympathizers without mercy. Adults
order children to kill, mutilate, and torture, conditioning them to the cruelest
abuses. Not only do children face the same treatment should they fall into the
hands of the enemy, many fear it from fellow fighters. Children who fail in their
military duties or try to desert can face summary execution by comrades
sometimes no older than themselves.
Trained to use modern assault rifles from the age of eleven, young recruits march
for days on end with little food, stung by insects and lashed by storms. Many die
or are wounded in battles with government soldiers backed by helicopters and
heavy artillery.
The recruitment of children by guerrillas and paramilitary forces has grown
significantly in recent years. Neither side has made any serious effort to halt the
practice. At times, both guerrillas and paramilitaries have offered to demobilize
children to obtain favorable terms in negotiations with the government. This is
not only a blatant attempt to trade for political advantage matters that should be
beyond negotiation; none of the promises made to date have been honored. Each
of the irregular forces in the conflict continues to flagrantly disregard its own
regulations regarding the minimum age for recruitment. Moreover, the
government has failed to protect children by enforcing Colombian law, which
prohibits the military recruitment of children under the age of eighteen, and it has
failed to bring to justice those responsible for this abhorrent practice.
In May and June 2002, Human Rights Watch conducted separate and private
interviews for this report with 112 former child combatants, including
seventy-nine former members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia-People's Army (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia-Ejército
del Pueblo, FARC-EP), twenty former members of the Camilist Union-National
Liberation Army (Unión Camilista-Ejército de Liberación Nacional, UC-ELN), and
thirteen former members of the paramilitary United Self-Defense Forces of
Colombia (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, AUC). We interviewed them in
government refuges for former child combatants; in a school run by the Interior
Ministry's Reinsertion Program; and in a school run by a private institution.
Speaking with these former child combatants weeks or months after they had
been captured or had deserted, we saw nothing remarkable about them at first.
Rather, we found ourselves looking at the faces of seemingly ordinary, poor
Colombian children. One girl caressed a doll as she spoke. Some boys had still
unbroken voices. Slightly older boys sported fashionable haircuts, silver
earrings, tattoos, and woven wrist bands. Several of the children were assertive
and boisterous. Others were impassive. While our interviewees recounted
stories of horror and destruction, the shouts of other children playing nearby
were distressingly normal.
This report provides the first comprehensive account of child combatants in
Colombia, and covers their recruitment, training, life in the ranks, role in combat,
and treatment after desertion, capture, or rescue. Its conclusions are urgent and
unequivocal all sides in Colombia's conflict must end the recruitment of
children, demobilize children from the armies and militia forces under their
control, and, for the children's well-being and safety, hand them over to an
appropriate national agency or international humanitarian organization.
There are no precise data on the number of child combatants in Colombia. To
formulate an estimate, Human Rights Watch collated information provided by the
children we interviewed, along with figures contained in reliable studies. These
sources
This report provides the first comprehensive account of child combatants in
Colombia, and covers their recruitment, training, life in the ranks, role in combat,
and treatment after desertion, capture, or rescue.
supported the conclusion that the number of children in Colombia's illegal armies
has grown markedly in recent years, reflecting policies and recruiting efforts
common to all irregular forces. In our view, the total number of child combatants
in Colombia likely exceeds 11,000. And we note that this is a conservative
estimate, which may significantly understate the actual total.
In part because it is the largest group, the FARC-EP has the majority of child
combatants. Both the UC-ELN and the paramilitaries also recruit children on a
significant scale. Children gave us specific and detailed information about the
high number of children who accompanied them in all three of these groups.
Some children told us that child combatants made up the majority of fighters in
the units in which they served.
Children are an especially vulnerable group in Colombia's triangular war between
guerrillas, paramilitaries, and government security forces. Their lives and welfare
are at risk even if they do not join an armed group. Children and their mothers
make up the majority of the Colombian families forcibly displaced by war, and
number in the hundreds of thousands. Children face reprisals, the destruction of
their homes, and kidnapping. In Colombia's cities, stray bullets from
guerrilla-paramilitary street wars and military clean-up operations claim the lives
of dozens of children, even as they sit in their homes.
But the plight of Colombia's child fighters is dramatic even when viewed against
this grim backdrop. Many choose to join an armed group because they feel safer
under its protection. Most have little concept of what life as a combatant entails
until it is too late to back out. In exchange for comradeship, food, and protection,
children are exposed to disease, physical exhaustion, injury, sudden death, and
torture at the hands of the enemy. Many lose all but the most tenuous family
contact.
Human Rights Watch has interviewed children who were as young as eight when
they started to fight. These children had special duties, like ferrying supplies and
information, acting as advance early warning guards, or even carrying explosives.
By the time they are thirteen, most child recruits have been trained in the use of
automatic weapons, grenades, mortars, and explosives. In the guerrilla forces,
children learn how to assemble and launch gas cylinder bombs. In both the
guerrillas and paramilitaries, they study the assembly of land mines, known as
"foot-breakers" (quiebrapatas), then apply that knowledge by planting deadly
killing fields. Usually, their first experience of combat comes soon after.
Children do not only risk their lives in combat. They are also expected to
participate in the atrocities that have become a hallmark of the Colombian
conflict. Human Rights Watch interviewed children who, as trainees, were forced
to watch captives being tortured. Others were made to shoot captives as a test of
valor. Some participated in assassinations of political figures and in "social
cleansing" killings of drug abusers and petty thieves. Still others were ordered to
execute comrades--even friends--captured while trying to run away.
In the debate over U.S. policy in Colombia, the recruitment of children by
Colombia's illegal armed groups has been a secondary issue. Concern has
focused more intensely on the Colombian military's tolerance of and complicity in
other grave violations, including support for or tolerance by some units in
Colombia's military for serious human rights abuses committed by paramilitary
forces, including massacres, political killings, "disappearances," kidnappings,
torture, and other mistreatment. Indeed, former paramilitary child combatants
interviewed by Human Rights Watch suggest that
They are also expected to participate in the atrocities that have become a
hallmark of the Colombian conflict.
Colombian military personnel continue to help train paramilitaries, are in close
and permanent contact with their commanders, and in some cases fight alongside
them. This is so despite U.S. legislation requiring, as a condition for the receipt of
military aid, that Colombia break the links between military units and paramilitary
groups, and suspend and prosecute the military officers who collude with them.
In 2003, Colombia will receive over $750 million in U.S. aid, most of which is
dedicated to military and police assistance. Given the continuing links between
units of Colombia's military and paramilitary groups and their serious human
rights violations, including the recruitment of children, the United States should
apply more aggressively the conditions on military assistance.