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PeaceNews #2444: Children as leaders. Lessons from Colombia's Children's Movement for Peace
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Colombian children are providing a model of how children can become the authentic leaders of their
community—and how children can lead the way to a community-wide shared vision, even when all hope for
common vision has faded. Novelist and journalist Sara Cameron was invited by the United Nations
Children's Fund (UNICEF) to chronicle Colombia's children-led peace movement.
Children as leaders. Lessons from Colombia's Children's Movement for Peace
Sara Cameron
For more than 20 years, Colombia has been caught up in a brutal conflict between political opponents. On
the left, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and other groups have conducted guerilla
warfare against the government since the mid-1960s. Unlike other insurgents in the region who were
dependent on support from the Soviet bloc, the Colombian "revolution" has been self-financed through
kidnapping for ransom, extortion, and by "taxing" coca producers and cocaine exporters.
On the right there is a confederation of paramilitary groups, covertly allied with the (ostensibly neutral)
army and funded by some of the country's wealthy families. The paramilitaries are responsible for most of
the worst human rights violations. Moving from village to village to drive out guerrillas, they have
murdered, mutilated and rendered homeless over a million people.
Both groups routinely commit massacres. Adults who try to make peace, or who are merely suspected of
aiding the wrong side (such as grocers who sell them groceries) are systematically exterminated or
displaced. Husbands are slaughtered in front of wives, parents in front of children, and community leaders
in front of entire villages. For all these reasons, Colombia would have become a country essentially without
hope—except for one thing: the desperate, loving, truth-telling of its children, and their surprising
transformation into leaders.
In a sense, children had no choice but to assume that role. More than 850,000 Columbian children have
been forced out of their homes by violence during the past dozen years. Up to 60% of those displaced
children dropped out of school. There are at least 2,000 soldiers under the age of 15; some as young as 8
years old. More than 4,000 children were murdered in 1996 alone, with the number continuing to rise each
year; and impunity is widespread. Rarely, if ever, is a murderer arrested. Children who remain alive are in
fear of losing their families. A recent survey showed that 70% of Colombian children are afraid when their
mother leaves the house that she will never return. As one fifteen-year-old put it, "Sometimes, [the soldiers]
kill only the father, but when they kill your father they kill a part of a child's life."
Living under this kind of system, many children choose to join one army or the other—where at least they
will feel safe. Others spend their lives seeking revenge. "Most people here," said a fifteen-year-old from a
village that the paramilitaries captured, "think that if you are hit once, you must hit back double." Homeless
children have become so numerous that they are developing new social
groups to ensure their own survival.
Children as leaders
The experience of the Children's Peace Movement in the last five years shows that children need to play an
important role in any troubled community; that they possess a real power to mobilise and essentially lead
their communities towards positive change. Communities in conflict benefit especially when adolescents
have the option of making positive contributions that improve the quality of life of themselves and others in
genuinely participatory ways. This is empowering for adolescents, but it is not easy. A violent context is
always complex to work in and the emphasis on participation requires adults to work in genuine partnership
with children. Many adults are uncomfortable about that role and the risk of children being manipulated is
always present.
Nevertheless, experience in Colombia suggests that an effective peace needs the cooperation of children
because by involving young people in these activities we provide them with a critical third choice —
without it their only options are to acquiesce to violence, or join in with it.
The creation of a movement
The Childrens' Movement rose up simultaneously in several places around the country, but the most
prominent was probably Apartadó, a city in the Urabá region, close to the Panama border.
In April 1996, the internationally known childrens' advocate Graça Machel (former minister of education
of Mozambique, who was to marry Nelson Mandela in 1997) visited the city—conducting research for her
United Nations report on the Impact of Armed Conflict on Children. The mayor summoned student leaders
to talk about their experience; meanwhile over five thousand children in local schools became involved in a
Week of Reflection which was backed by the Church, the Red Cross and UNICEF. With support from
teachers, the children wrote stories, poems and letters, painted pictures, and constructed sculptures, to
create a compelling exhibition for Ms Machel.
Many were heartfelt, painful, even wistful messages. The children described loss, revenge, fear, pain, anger
and how hard it was to concentrate on school work "when all the time I am feeling afraid."
"Here in Apartadó," wrote one ten year old girl, "we only know how to write the word 'peace' because we
know what letters to use. We do not know its real meaning, but it must be very beautiful."
While most children worked in their classrooms, more than 140 student leaders formed a special council.
They divided themselves in various "commissions" to discuss different aspects of the conflict. There was a
commission for peace making, a commission for human rights, another on displaced people, and so on.
They met in one vast hall, with each commission supported by one of the adults.
For many of the students just the idea of being asked what they thought about the war and how they could
help peace was a revelation. Farlis Calle, then fifteen years old and who would later become a prominent
leader in the national Children's Movement for Peace, asked why they did not teach peace education in
Colombian schools. "How can we learn to be peaceful if our teachers do not help us understand what it
means? No one here has ever lived in peace. We have been fighting from the time we were born."
By the end of the two day session the various commissions had come up with many suggestions: for peace
education, recreation projects, cultural events and "a youth movement that works for peace". But the
children had no idea how this was really going to work. They admitted that they lacked "clear proposals
because we don't know what we want, we are confused". They asked for training, "so that children can
teach other children about living in peace".
During the marathon debating session, one of Farlis's friends said to her, "We have to have something to
give this Ms Machel when she comes here. We need something to show that we can deal with our own
problems. We don't want her leaving here thinking we are just stupid and helpless."
And that was why the students created the Declaration of the Children of Apartadó, so that Graça Machel
would understand that they had some answers to their problems, although until that Week of Reflection the
children had never really considered the war or peace-making to be "their" problem.
The Declaration is direct and wrenching. "We ask the warring factions for peace in our homes, for them not
to make orphans of children, to allow us to play freely in the streets and for no harm to come to our small
brothers and sisters. We ask for these things so our own children do not
suffer as we have done."
Organise!
Things might have ended there as they so often do—a dignitary comes to town, children perform, and then
everyone goes home—but the students had been fired by the deliberations of their commissions. Just prior
to Machel's visit, Farlis Calle had been elected by the students as Apartadó's first Child Mayor, and they
believed that this gave them a constitutional right to form a local government of children. They sent notices
to schools in the municipality, because they wanted others to know they could and should participate in
their government, and soon up to 200 children were pouring out to peace meetings three times a week,
gathering in football fields and in parks. There was considerable chaos at first and argument about what
children could and could not do to make peace.
"To have peace you need to solve poverty and children cannot do that," recalls Farlis Calle "But we found
other things that children could do." They set up "peace carnivals" that encouraged children from feuding
communities to play together because they believed that children having fun was a good way to help peace.
Meanwhile, a group of 27 children from around the country, aged 9 to 15 years, gathered at a May 1996
workshop organised by UNICEF. There were 30 adults in the room as well, representing peace and
children's organisations, but the young people did most of the talking. They took turns describing the
impact of the country's violence on the children in their communities. Some spoke of gangs roaming the
streets, terrorising children on their way to school. Medellín had its own brand of violence—a mix of
gangs, urban militias and drug cartels plus the cult of the sicarios, the young assassins. Many of the
children were amazed to find out that they were not alone. They had not realised until then that so many
other children lived under such conditions of violence.
Three main realisations emerged from the workshop. First, most Colombians were unaware of the impact
of the war on children. Secondly, no one would be more effective at getting that message across than
children themselves. Thirdly, they needed a bigger platform to reach a wider and more influential audience.
Thus, the participants—both adults and children—began planning a special election for children only. They
would be asked to choose which of those rights espoused in the constitution did they want the most, for
themselves and their communities: The right to education? To justice? To freedom of expression? To
peace?
A mandate for peace and rights
The election became known as the Children's Mandate for Peace and Rights. The National Electoral
Commission agreed to run it like a real election. Children were deeply involved in organising and planning
for it. They helped to design materials explaining child-rights in language other children would understand.
They devised child-rights games and taught them in schools and public meetings. They designed and
starred in advertisements and ran press conferences and town meetings, talking publicly about the war,
peace and their rights.
In October 1996, children went to the polls. The colourful ballot listed twelve rights summarised from the
Colombian constitution and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. At some locations children ran out
of voting cards, but they copied the ballot onto paper napkins and still cast their votes. In Bogotá voting had
to be held on two consecutive Saturdays to meet the demand.
The adult organisers tended to see the mandate as mainly an educational exercise: a way to teach
Colombian children lessons in citisenship and democracy. It had been hoped that perhaps 300,000 children
would take part in the vote but by election day, the idea had caught on so strongly that more than 2.7
million children—about a third of all people aged 7 to 18 years—packed the polls. This was all the more
remarkable because, for financial reasons, it had only been possible to run the election in about a third of
the more than 1000 municipalities. In 100 of the most violent and impoverished municipalities especially
targeted by the organisers of the vote, the turnout was higher than 90%.
The results were educational—but for adults, even more than children. Before the children's vote, the peace
movement in Colombia had been weak and fragmented. Thousands of human rights activists had been
assassinated or forced to flee the country. Plans to hold a national referendum on peace had been put on
hold because it seemed too difficult and dangerous. Now, the Children's Mandate provided a profound
wake-up call for the nation. As one human rights activist explained, "Until the Children's Mandate came
along, we really had no idea that children understood."
A tidal wave of hope
The following year, a broad coalition of organisations, led by UNICEF, the peace network Redepaz and the
anti-kidnapping group Pais Libre, put forward the Citizen's Mandate for Peace, Life and Liberty. The ballot
asked adult Colombians to support the children's vote, reject the atrocities of the war and make a personal
pledge to build peace. The previous presidential election had drawn only 4.5 million people to the polls—
less than 25% of the electorate. But more than ten million Colombians pledged their support for the
Citizen's Mandate. As a result, peace was catapulted to centre-stage and became the basis on which the
presidential elections were fought and won in May 1998 by Andres Pastrana. Pastrana said later that the
Mandates "gave him his agenda for the presidency. If he did nothing else during his term in office he had to
make peace."
For many months Colombians rode on a tidal wave of hope that fifty years of war would be suddenly swept
away but it was not that easy. A year after Pastrana's election, the government and the guerrillas lurched
unsteadily towards peace talks. Massacres, kidnappings, assassinations, and unofficial emigration
continued at all-time high levels.
Against this backdrop of continuing violence, the Children's Movement for Peace continues to define itself.
A core group of about 25 children drawn from different institutions and municipalities form the Children's
Council in Bogotá. The Council functions as an advisory body to the supporting organisations (UNICEF,
Redepaz, the Scouts, the Red Cross, the Catholic Church, World Vision, among others), helps develop
peace activities involving children and operates as a publicity arm. Since 1996 several Children's
Assemblies, involving between one and two hundred children from across the country, have met to discuss
child rights and peace-making.
One of the legacies of the Childrens' Movement is the way in which it shows how children can make a
difference. They cannot play the same role that, say, adult peace activists might play. They have a different
relationship with their community, and in that relationship lies their
potential.
Breaking the cycle of violence
Juan Elias Uribe (now aged 17 and one of the movement's most visible organisers) was almost 15 years old
when he attended the May 1996 workshop where the national Children's Movement was founded. He
returned home full of enthusiasm. "I really believed that if children all over the country worked together we
could make a big difference." Not long afterwards, however, everything changed, forever. In July 1996
three gunmen walked into the offices where his father had a dental practice. They shot Señor Uribe and his
19-year-old niece who was helping in the office. Within hours both died from their wounds. It was never
clear why Juan Elias's father had been assassinated. Several suspects were jailed for a while and then
released. The family continued receiving threats and were ultimately forced to leave Aguachica and join the
swelling ranks of Colombia's internally displaced population.
Revenge is the expected response of any male who suffers such a loss and for a while Juan Elias carried a
gun. Yet revenge was never really an option for him. "At first, when my father was murdered, I thought
that all the work I was doing for peace was worth nothing because it had not saved him," he said later. "Yet
my father had always wanted me to work for peace and I did not want other children to share the nightmare
of losing someone they loved so much." He put the gun away. Within two months of his father's murder,
Juan Elias was in Bogotá recording television commercials for the Children's Mandate.
"In the end, my father's death pushed me harder and gave me a more realistic attitude towards peace. I
know this work can be dangerous but if they did not stop me when my father was alive, they can do nothing
to stop me now."
The Children's Movement does not take on enemies, no matter what the provocation. This is a principled
stand and a highly pragmatic one as well. "We never accuse any of the armed groups," says Farlis Calle. "If
we did we could become targets. We will always denounce these terrible events but we never know who is
responsible. We simply do not know." The strategy not only protects children individually, but helps the
Movement to retain the neutrality which is crucial for its survival and
growth.
Broadening the definition
The level on which most children "understand" this complex situation is different from that of adults. They
think less about political and economic concerns, and more about justice and fairness. Perhaps as a result,
their definition of peace-making is very broad—it includes any activity that improves the quality of life in a
community affected by violence. The Children's Movement states that making peace in homes and on the
streets is just as important as making peace in the war.
After all, domestic and neighborhood violence is much more prevalent. While approximately 6,000 people
die every year as a result of the war, another 25,000 are murdered in domestic, street or other criminal
violence. Nearly a million Colombian children suffer serious enough abuse to warrant hospital attention.
And more than 4,000 children are murdered each year by people they
know.
Building a vision
"We do not want to inherit the country that adults have created for us," said Juan Elias Uribe. "On the day
of the Children's Mandate there was peace in Colombia. If there can be one day of peace, why not a week,
a month, a year, fifty years—to make up for our fifty years of war? We want to live a different kind of life,
and to get it we have to be involved in creating it. We will never give up."
His fellow leader, Farlis, said, "I dream that one day I will wake up and my father will go to work and I
will not have the fear that he will be in danger, that he will be shot. This is the dream that we are all trying
to build. If I am killed, at least it will be over something worth dying for. It is better to die for something
than for nothing, isn't it?"
Sara Cameron is the author of Out of War, a new book about the
Children's Movement for Peace in
Colombia. See review p34.
This article is an edited excerpt taken from Peter Senge et al Schools
that Learn: A Fifth Discipline
Fieldbook for Educators, Parents and Everyone Who Cares About
Education (Doubleday, New York, 2000
Under the title: Children as Leaders : The lessons from Colombia's
Children's Movement by Sara Cameron
(pp 545-550)).
Reproduced with permission from the author.
For more in-depth perspectives on the Children's Movement for Peace, see www.fieldbook.com/
education/peace_children.html.
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