Countering Violence in Colombia

In October that year, the Children's Movement for Peace staged a special election known as the Children's Mandate for Peace and Rights. On the day of the election, an astonishing 2.7 million children voted for the rights they considered most important, the main votes going to the right to life, the right to peace, the right to love in the family, and the right to good treatment. And more than 4 million adults also voted for peace.

Children's Movement for Peace was nominated in both 1998 and 1999 for a Nobel Peace Prize. Now several of the children travel throughout their country and the world speaking out against the violence, despite the fact that some of the youth leaders have received death threats because of their work.

In Colombia, ten people die on average every day from violence spawned by drug trafficking and guerilla warfare. Only 30 percent of the children complete ninth grade, and kids as young as 9 years old participate in the country's warfare. In an effort to redirect the youth to something more positive, the Children's Movement for Peace actively promotes peace by leading conflict resolution seminars, peer counseling, tree planting, and "anything that boosts self-esteem and creativity."

Lama Zopa Rinpoche and Ven. Roger Kunsang met the five teenagers chosen to represent the movement in their Nobel nomination last year in Los Angeles, where they visited local high schools and were being interviewed for a CNN documentary. "They stood up at quite a young age to go against this outrageously violent situation in Colombia," Ven. Roger said. "Their parents were shot in front of them, things like that. They stood up together and said, 'The parents of Colombia can't do anything about it, but can we still do something about it?' They made their own decision and came up with the idea about doing a demonstration on the right to live, and 2.7 million children came to vote for the right for peace. It was quite mind-blowing results.

"These teenagers from Colombia said no to revenge, no to anger, no to being forced to act just like these guerrillas and gangs. For some reason they chose to act differently. Some of them say their immediate reaction was anger, but they dealt with that quite quickly. If they reacted that way they'd be doing exactly the same as those who killed their relatives."

Mayerly Sanchez I was born in Bogotá and grew up in a small town with my family, and then we went back to the city. I'm now 16 years old.

Bogotá is generally thought of as a place where you can find a job, create a business, and pick up your life again after escaping the war in the country. But so many people are either escaping the war or the guerilla groups themselves that new gangs have started here in the city. People have so few resources and the parents work all day, so kids who are alone meet up with bad people and form these gangs.

I started working for peace around eight years ago when I saw other kids of 7 and 8 years old smoking cigarettes and joining gangs. I couldn't believe they were doing this. I visited an institution called World Vision that was helping poor children to explore possible solutions. I was 7 years old when I started this work.

So many young people were affected by gangs and violence, but our parents were busy with work and didn't have time to explore our problems or support us. The fact that we were seeing children of 7, 8 years old, smoking in the streets and trying to be part of gangs – this made us think about it. We didn't want to encourage the slogan that if you're part of a gang then you've got heart. We thought it was much better if you're doing something to help other people. We started to do it and now there are more possibilities.

Nicholas Puerta I'm 16 years old. I am lucky because there has always been peace in my family. I started to notice that a lot of people in Colombia didn't have a peaceful life, mainly from watching TV. Most of the people in our country are poor and treat each other badly˜gangs, family violence, even kids killing their parents. For example, a case came up today or yesterday of a boy who wanted to enter a Satanic cult in his neighborhood. They told him they had to kill his mother otherwise he's out of the group. So he took out his mother's eyes.

Generally education in Colombia is very bad because there is no money, so I go to Abraham Lincoln School, which is an American school with lots of foreign students. In it we've started a school for peace for the young people, in which we campaign against drugs, gangs and violence. We also promote conflict resolution as another method besides violence. When we do conflict resolution we try to show reasons why people want to fight, we try to promote understanding of people's motivations; we also discuss solutions.

This article can be read in its entirety in Mandala