Most of them are 14 or older,'' she said, although a few are younger. While military officers accuse the FARC and a separate rebel group, the National Liberation Army, of forcibly recruiting children, experts say most youngsters join voluntarily, frustrated by a lack of educational opportunity and other factors. Some 600,000 children under age 12 don't have access to schooling in Colombia. Moreover, of every 100 kids that begin elementary school, only 40 finish, said Astrid Rendon of the Don Bosco Center for Children in Medellin. No one knows for sure if the rebels have more child combatants or less than the rightist armies.
Hard numbers are difficult to obtain.
One study said as many as 50 percent of paramilitaries in the Middle Magdalena river valley, an anti-guerrilla stronghold, were children. They say that the kids don't want to go home. They don't let you interview them,'' said Lopez, the defender for Meta state. A two-year 1998 study by the national Office of the People's Defender underscored the trauma that former adolescent combatants endure. The study showed that 18 percent of child combatants had killed someone, and 60 percent had watched people being killed.