For too many years, the face of children has been the face of Colombia's endless civil war, a conflict in which children often kill other children. Now, under mounting public pressure, the country is taking the first steps toward ending this particularly cruel aspect of the conflict, but many more children with baby faces seemed destined to die before the practice can be ended. Only last month, the army halted recruitment of soldiers under age 18, but thousands of minors still fill the ranks of rebel and private outlaw armies. Kids as young as 12 and 14 tote rifles, and serve on front lines to protect adult fighters. Among rightist paramilitary forces, child combatants are known as ''little bells'' because they serve as an early-warning system.
Leftist guerrillas call their child members ''little bees'' for their agility and power to sting.
In the cities, child members of criminal gangs are called ''mini-cars'' because they ferry drugs and weapons without raising suspicions. Massive rural violence has uprooted 700,000 minors, human-rights monitors say, and many of those kids fail to attend school. Juvenile crimes are soaring, and youth gangs in cities like Medellin flourish. Throughout the country, many children live in fear of becoming victims of massacres and kidnappings. The narcotics trade, which fuels the civil war, now relies heavily on a child labor force.