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Human Rights Watch estimates that more than 11,000 children fight in Colombia's armed conflict, one of the highest totals in the world… Approximately 80 percent of child combatants in Colombia belong to one of the two left-wing guerrilla groups, the FARC or ELN. The remainder fights in paramilitary ranks…

After declaring a ceasefire in December 2002, paramilitary groups promised to release all children in their ranks. More than two years later, this has not happened. According to the Secretary General's report, paramilitaries have released nearly 180 children to the Colombian authorities. But thousands of other children continue to be used as combatants, even as paramilitary leaders engage in negotiations with the government for the demobilization of their troops…

Many children join up for food or physical protection, to escape domestic violence, or because of promises of money. Some are coerced to join at gunpoint, or join out of fear. Others are street children with nowhere to go. Children as young as 13 are trained to use assault rifles, grenades and mortars.

Child soldiers are often ordered to participate in summary executions, torture, murder, kidnapping and attacks on civilians. They are also exposed to disease, physical exhaustion, injury, sudden death and torture at the hands of the enemy. Children who try to escape and return to their families risk execution.

"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… 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 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…

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.

Child Combatants with the FARC-EP

The FARC-EP shows no leniency to children because of their age, assigning children the same duties as adults. Those who break minor disciplinary rules are sent off to dig trenches or latrines, clear forest, cut and carry firewood, or do kitchen duties. If they lose a weapon, they may be forced to enter combat without one until they are able to recover a replacement from the enemy. To deal with serious breaches, a "war council" is held. Combatants hear the charges and the defence. A death sentence may be passed by a show of hands.

Children who desert are often shot, especially if they take their weapons with them. The same fate awaits suspected informers, infiltrators, or children who fall asleep on guard duty. The commander handpicks a group to carry out the sentence. The child, hands tied by nylon cord, is taken beyond the camp's perimeter and made to wait while the squad digs a grave.

Several children told Human Rights Watch that they had been ordered to carry out an execution of another child. Some said they had been selected deliberately because the victim was a friend. After the execution, usually by revolver shot, the body may be gutted before it is buried. The dead child's family is rarely, if ever, notified.

Children are also called upon to execute captured enemies. Several former FARC-EP child combatants described in detail to Human Rights Watch how guerrillas tortured captive paramilitaries by pushing needles under their nails, severing fingers and arms, and cutting their faces. Several children told us that their commanders made them watch these gruesome spectacles.

Internal FARC-EP regulations stipulate that fifteen is the minimum age for recruitment, which is in line with the norms of international humanitarian law. Yet the guerrillas have never respected the minimum age requirement, despite repeated promises to do so. More than two-thirds of the former FARC-EP combatants interviewed by Human Rights Watch joined the group when they were age fourteen or younger, and most were recruited after the promulgation of these regulations in 1999.

Child Combatants with Paramilitaries

For years, the paramilitaries grouped together in the AUC have committed massacres and atrocities against civilians in their efforts to drive guerrilla forces from disputed territories. Several of the former paramilitary child recruits Human Rights Watch interviewed for this report told us how they were forced to mutilate and kill captured guerrillas early in their training. Others described how they saw acid thrown in the faces of captives and how some captives were mutilated with chainsaws…

Guerrilla units are from one-quarter to nearly one-half female, and may include girls as young as eight. The paramilitary forces have comparatively few female members and very few young girls.

Girls sometimes join to escape sexual abuse at home; in other respects, the reasons they join are similar to those of boys. Many told Human Rights Watch that in the guerrillas, they had roughly the same duties and possibilities of promotion as males.

Yet girls in the guerrilla forces still face gender-related pressures. Although rape and overt sexual harassment are not tolerated, many male commanders use their power to form sexual liaisons with under-age girls. Girls as young as twelve are required to use contraception, and must have abortions if they get pregnant…

Irregular forces exploit children's vulnerability. They mount recruitment drives that glamorize the warrior life and tempt with promises of money and a brighter future. Some families send children to combat because they are unable to support them, and they know that membership in an armed group guarantees a square meal, clothing, and protection. Many children join to escape family violence and physical or sexual abuse, or to find the affection their families fail to give. Others crave the status of a gun or a cell phone. Camp life promises adventure, comradeship, and a chance to prove oneself.

The reality of life as a combatant is deeply frightening. But once incorporated, children cannot leave voluntarily. To the contrary, they know that the price of attempting to desert could be their lives.