AcknowledgementsThis report is based on field research in and around Bogotá and Cartagena in July and August 2004 and September 2005, with additional research from New York and Bogotá by Michael Bochenek, Jhon Bermúdez, Haidy Duque, and María Eugenia Ramírez. Michael Bochenek is counsel to the Children’s Rights Division of Human Rights Watch. Jhon Bermúdez is executive director of Fundación Dos Mundos. Haidy Duque is executive director of Taller de Vida. María Eugenia Ramírez is a consultant on human rights issues. Former Human Rights Watch associate Ximena Casas and Barbara Sartori, Nikolaus Steinberg, and Katherine Zeisel, all former interns with Human Rights Watch, provided additional research assistance. Michael Bochenek wrote the report. Lois Whitman, executive director of the Children’s Rights Division; Marianne Møllmann, researcher with the Women’s Rights Division; Wilder Tayler, Human Rights Watch’s legal and policy director; and Ian Gorvin, of Human Rights Watch’s program office, edited the report. Ophelia Field, acting refugee program director of Human Rights Watch; Bill Frelick, refugee program director of Human Rights Watch; Maria McFarland, Colombia researcher for the Americas Division; and Joanne Mariner, deputy director of the Americas Division, also reviewed and commented on the manuscript. We are grateful to the nongovernmental organizations and individuals who assisted us in the course of our field research, among them Matthew Alexander; Alexis Alisa, Liga de Mujeres Desplazadas, Cartagena; the Asociación de Madres Comunitarias de Cartagena y Bolívar; Jon Balcom; Dr. María Cristina Calderón, Patricia Ospina, Nídia Melo, and Elsa García, Asociación Probienestar de la Familia Colombiana (Profamilia) in Bogotá and the staff of Profamilia in Cartagena; Amalia Eraso; FEDES; the Liga de Mujeres con la Paz y la Libertad, Cartagena; Médicos sin Fronteras España; Marta Skretteberg, Norwegian Refugee Council; the Red de Empoderamiento de Cartagena y Bolívar; Harvey Suárez, Codhes; and the numerous teachers we spoke with in Cartagena, Cazucá, Ciudad Bolívar, and Usme. We would also like to express our appreciation to officials with the Attention and Orientation Unit in Soacha, the Defensoría del Pueblo, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the International Organization for Migration, the Ministry of Social Protection, U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the Procuradoría General de la República; the Red de Solidaridad Social, the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and those with other governmental and intergovernmental agencies who asked not to be named. Finally, we would like to thank the children and parents we interviewed. All names of children have been changed to protect their privacy. Human Rights Watch gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the Malcolm Hewitt Foundation, the Independence Foundation, the Oak Foundation, and the community of people who support Human Rights Watch’s work to defend children. Human Rights Watch Reports on Colombia Smoke and Mirrors: Colombia’s Demobilization of
Paramilitary Groups, 2005 You’ll Learn Not to Cry: Child Combatants in Colombia, 2003 A Wrong Turn: The Record of the Colombian Attorney
General’s Office, 2002 The “Sixth Division”: Military-Paramilitary Ties and U.S. Policy in Colombia, 2001 Beyond Negotiation: International Humanitarian Law and Its
Application to the Conduct of the FARC-EP The Ties That Bind: Colombia and Military-Paramilitary
Links, 2000 War Without Quarter: Colombia and International
Humanitarian Law, 1998 Colombia’s Killer Networks: The Military-Paramilitary
Partnership and the United States, 1996 Generation Under Fire: Children and Violence in Colombia, 1994 State of War: Political Violence and Counterinsurgency in Colombia, 1993 Political Murder and Reform in Colombia: The Violence Continues, 1992 The “Drug War” in Colombia, 1990 The Killings in Colombia, 1989 Human Rights in Colombia as President Barco Begins, 1986 The Central-Americanization of Colombia? Human Rights and the Peace Process, 1986 The “MAS” Case in Colombia: Taking on the Death Squads, 1983 Human Rights in the Two Colombias: Functioning Democracy, Militarized Society, 1982 Human Rights Watch Reports on Forcible Internal Displacement Coming Home: Return and Reintegration in Angola, 2005 “Still Critical”: Prospects in 2005 for Internally
Displaced Kurds in Turkey, 2005 “If We Return, We Will Be Killed”: Consolidation of Ethnic
Cleansing in Darfur, Sudan, 2004 Claims in Conflict: Reversing Ethnic Cleansing in Northern Iraq, 2004 Spreading Dispair: Russian Abuses in Ingushetia, 2003 Struggling Through Peace: Return and Resettlement in Angola, 2003 Abducted and Abused: Renewed Conflict in Northern Uganda,
2003 Into Harm’s Way: Forcible Return of Displaced People to Chechnya, 2003 Displaced and Disregarded: Turkey’s Failing Village Return
Program, 2002 Bosnia: Unfinished Business: The Return of Refugees and
Displaced Persons to Bijeljina, 2000 War Without Quarter: Colombia and International Humanitarian
Law, 1998 Liberia: Emerging from the Destruction, 1997 Failing the Internally Displaced: The UNDP Displaced
Persons Program in Kenya, 1997
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