Diana's Story

1 February 2008

Over 200,000 Colombians have been killed since the violence began in the 1960s, in what has become essentially a turf war between the left-wing guerrillas and right-wing paramilitary groups to gain control of the country’s mineral wealth and massive and lucrative drugs trade.

An estimated 11,000 girls and boys are being used as child soldiers in Colombia by illegal armed groups. Diana is eighteen. She came to Bogotá, Colombia’s capital city, 12 months ago. She rents a small apartment and is studying IT at Colombia’s national vocational training centre. She has dreams and aspirations. In many ways she is like any other eighteen year old. In many ways she is not.

Diana is a former child soldier who has passed through the rehabilitation programme run by Y Care International partner Bogotá YMCA. Today she wears the normal teenage uniform of denim jeans and jacket, but for the previous seven years, from the age of ten, she wore combat fatigues and lived like any other serving member of a military force, hiding in the thick jungle with fellow members of the guerrilla unit to which she belonged.

Diana, whose mother abandoned her when she was eight years old, followed in the footsteps of her older brothers by joining the largest guerrilla force in Colombia. Her formative years were those of any serving soldier: living in the jungle, following orders, camaraderie, training. Many child soldiers are used as lookouts, for spying and helping set up ambushes. Some are used for carrying guns and bombs and some use them. Staff at YMCA Bogotá don’t ask who did what. They just try to help young people who are dealing with difficult pasts in which they have been both perpetrators and victims.

To read Diana's story in English or Spanish, download the pdfs below.

Building a brighter future(English)

Construir un futuro más prometedor(Spanish)

By Pamela Nowicka for Y Care International

This feature accompanies ground-breaking research into the rehabilitation of Colombia's former child soldiers. Read the full research report