Generation Under Fire

To be a poor child, a runaway, a child prostitute, or a child in a war zone in Colombia is to live with the threat of murder in daily intimacy. At an average of six per day, 2,190 children were murdered in 1993 according to Colombia's national statistical bureau (DANE). In some regions, the murder of children has reached epidemic proportions. A significant number of murders of children are the direct responsibility of the state. This report is concerned with the human rights of children targeted by state agents for murder and torture; state-tolerated vigilante violence against children (called "social cleansing"); widespread state neglect of the rehabilitation and appropriate incarceration of abandoned and violent children, which fuels "social cleansing"; and the generalized impunity enjoyed by the killers of children, beginning with agents of the state. We also include reports on the murder by armed insurgents or their clients of children in open violation of international humanitarian law.