Submitted by crinadmin on
Summary: To be a child is to be at risk in
Colombia. To be a poor child, a
runaway, a child prostitute, or a child
in a war zone is to live with the
threat of murder in daily intimacy.
To be a child is to be at risk in Colombia. To be a poor child, a
runaway, a child prostitute, or a child in a war zone is to live with
the threat of murder in daily intimacy. At an average of 6 per day,
2,190 children were murdered in 1993, according to Colombia's
national statistical bureau. In some regions, the murder of children
has reached epidemic proportions. In the city of Cali, for instance,
the murder of children increased by more than 70 percent between 1991
and 1992. Per capita killings of children in Colombia exceed those in
Brazil, where the killing of black street youth has captured world
headlines. Like most Third World countries, Colombia is a nation of
youth, so to speak of children is to include close to half its
population of 35 million people. A significant number of murders of
children are the direct responsibility of the state. Generation Under
Fire is concerned with the human rights of children targeted by state
agents for murder and torture; state-tolerated vigilante violence
against children (euphemistically referred to as "social cleansing");
the murder by armed insurgents or their clients of children in open
violation of international humanitarian law; widespread state neglect
of the rehabilitation and appropriate incarceration of abandoned and
violent children, which fuels the"social cleansing"; and the
generalized impunity enjoyed by the killers of children, beginning
with agents of the state.