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Soldiers of Peace
In October 1996, the children of Colombia staged a special election known as the Children's Mandate for Peace and Rights. Some 2.7 million children voted for the rights they considered most important. The overwhelming majority voted for the rights to life and peace. This year, the children of Colombia were nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, their second nomination in as many years. Today, the Children's Peace Movement has gone far beyond just words. Its members are actively promoting peace throughout Colombia. All the leaders of this peace movement are teenagers who come from some of the poorest and most dangerous parts of the country. Many have lost their loved ones to the violence and some have even faced death threats because of their work. But despite the obstacles, these teens are committed to shaping a peaceful future.
These children represent the fourth generation of Colombians to grow up with war. Their country is one of the most violent in the world, and the conflict there is as difficult to solve as it is to understand. El Tiempo Editor Francisco Santos says there is a multiple war being waged in Colombia. "One is waged by the leftist insurgent movements, FARC, ELN ... The government's in the middle of it, and we have another element ... which is the drug trafficking and the drug traffickers. They are a very dangerous element in the peace process. I'm very sure they'll try to uh, boycott it, they'll try to do assassinations to destroy this peace process, because they're not interested in it."
Ana Teresa Bernal of the REDEPAZ Peace Organization says the main victims of the war in Colombia are children. "There are anti-personnel mines and the problem of many children becoming orphans because their parents are murdered. In Colombia, all the armies involve children in the war." In the midst of such turmoil, any political action carries deadly risks. "We came in and held elections right at the point when things were going very badly in our country," says Farlis. Elections in Colombia have often been targeted by guerrilla groups, and many feared that the children's vote would be no exception. At one point, Farlis says UNICEF's Cecilio Adorna told her that the elections might be stopped because there were so many problems. "... And so what I did was I looked at him and said, you can't do this to me. I can't kill the hopes of that many kids. So Mr. Adorna told me, but you've got to understand that I'm thinking about you, your physical safety, about the possibility that they could hurt you. And I told him no, you have to trust that nothing will happen to us." Farlis says they called for a day of peacefulness, and some guerrilla groups confirmed and said they would have a cease-fire in all the districts where there were ballot boxes that day.
It was the first time in Colombia's history that a guerrilla group agreed to a cease-fire on an election day. One year later, in a country not known for high voter turnout, more than 10 million Colombian adults pledged their support for the mandate for peace. The movement for peace has grown since the children's vote three years ago, but so has the violence. The Nobel nomination put the leaders of this movement at the forefront of a difficult and often dangerous road to peace. These five teens were chosen by UNICEF to go The Hague to attend an historic international peace conference. "I have many expectations for the trip to the Hague," says Dilia. "One of them is to show the lovely face of Colombia. It's not just a country full of drug traffickers and guerrillas and violence, but it also has other things to offer. It has a lot to give."
Farlis says: "Contemporary societies think their children are cute, sweet, beautiful, but they don't see beyond their noses. So we also want to show the rest of the world that the role of the child must be elevated, and there are moments in acute crises in countries when children have to make up part of the solution, because all the countries say children are the future of the country. But we are not the future, we are the present, a present which we all have to build together." With their second Nobel nomination in two years, the Colombian Children's Peace Movement is clearly making waves on an international level. But in their own country, public acknowledgment hasn't always come easily. Santos says he thinks the biggest weakness of the Children Peace Movement is how much it has been tied to organizations: "I think the more autonomy they get, the more credibility the Children Peace Movement will have." From the beginning, the children's movement has received financial, strategic and moral support from UNICEF, the Red Cross and other human rights groups. Dilia says the group has never been manipulated in any way. "Guidance is something else. That is one of the fundamental jobs of adults. They give us guidance, but all of the initiatives have come solely from us. We thought of the mandate." In the three years since the vote, the children have not stopped working, and even the most hard-nosed journalists agree that the children have had an impact on their country.
Jeremy Lennard, a correspondent for The Economist, says he believes the movement has played a significant role in molding society. "It seems to me that one of the very, very valuable things that the children can do is lay this groundwork, so that people who are going to be in their adolescence or in their early 20s when this country finally calms down will be prepared to take on a, literally, a pacifist role in society." After decades of struggle in Colombia, a skeptical, war weary country has glimpsed the possibility of peace. The fact that they did not win the Nobel Peace Prize seems irrelevant. The children of the peace movement are proving that children of war can become soldiers of peace. Says Lennard: "The level on which the children are working is not spectacular and headline making in the short term, but without it, Colombia won't be able to live in peace." |
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