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In a country where homicide by gunshot is the leading cause of death (ahead of cancer, heart failure, and accidents), the now 17-year-old Sanchez says Christ's presence helps her to lead 100,000 children in a campaign that has been nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Violence has festered in Colombia for nearly four decades among paramilitary commandos, rebel guerrillas, and cocaine lords. The link between these factions and the hooded assassins who commit an estimated 85 percent of Colombia's murders is often unclear. In this urban briar patch, youth gangs flourish.

"All these gangs were in constant confrontation—one never knows what they are fighting over," Sanchez says. "Like a lot of people, Milton went out to watch what was going on, and he was facing a gang, or friends of that gang. In a fight, nothing and no one is respected—it was like they were going crazy, and he became a victim of watching what was happening."

Far from her speaking engagements to international audiences, Sanchez speaks to ct by telephone from World Vision offices in Bogotá. The staff has been sent home due to street disturbances amid a transportation strike; a friend of a World Vision employee has unlocked the door so Sanchez can call ct.

Occasionally a note of world-weariness creeps into her spirited voice—or maybe she is just tired of answering questions from the media. In any event, having spent much of her childhood fighting for peace amid often inexplicable bloodshed, at times she interrupts her breathless, lilting Spanish with a sigh.

"It's sad; it discourages you when you find out somebody has been killed," she says. "Besides the confusion of trying to figure out what has happened, many people have closed their ears to what we're doing—our work with kids to bring peace does not matter to them."

Periodic discouragement, however, does not overcome her. "Until my last breath, I'll keep working for peace," she says. "There are highs and lows but, no—you have to go on."

The Colombia Children's Movement for Peace provides kids with the tools to promote nonviolence to their peers and to their elected officials. In October 1996, the movement sponsored a poll in which 2.7 million Colombian children selected peace as their top priority. This inspired more than 10 million adults to vote in favor of a similar Citizen's Mandate for Peace, Life, and Freedom a year later—the largest number of votes ever cast for an initiative in Colombia.

At the same time, the movement pushed the government to establish "peace zones," where paramilitary squads and guerrillas are prohibited from using children in their conflicts.

After a visit by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Jose Ramos-Horta of East Timor, the Colombia Children's Movement for Peace under Sanchez's leadership has been nominated for the distinguished prize in 1998, 1999, and 2000. It strikes at the root causes of violence—poverty, narcotics trade, and turf battles—literally under adults' noses.

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December 3 2001, Vol. 45, No. 15