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Tanja Nijmeijer of Holland spent more than 10 years fighting with the rebel group FARC in the jungles of Colombia. More recently, she has been part of the guerillas' peace negotiating team in Cuba. What drives her?
Until recently, there had long been only two possible fates awaiting Tanja Nijmeijer: a grave in the Colombian jungle or a cell in an American maximum-security prison. Nijmeijer has never had any doubts as to which option she would prefer. "I will die in the jungle," she says.
Nijmeijer is wanted by Interpol for three cases of kidnapping, the use of a firearm during a violent crime and supporting a terrorist organization.
The accord is a first step towards all minors leaving rebel ranks, the two sides said in a joint statement read out at a news conference in Havana, where they have been negotiating a peace deal for more than three years. The FARC has long been accused by the government and human rights groups of using child solders as cannon fodder. The rebel group announced last year it would stop recruiting minors, but no deal was reached on handling teenagers and children already in its ranks. "The deal foresees the FARC handing over information necessary to identify and locate the minors still in these camps and collaborating with (their) exit," the government's top negotiator, Humberto de la Calle, said.
The drug-fuelled civil war in Colombia has killed some 220,000 people and displaced millions of others since 1964. The FARC's forces are estimated at 8,000 guerrillas but it is not known how many might be minors. The group said on Sunday there were 21 children under 15 among its ranks. "We have agreed with the national government that these minors cannot be prosecuted and that, as victims of an immense social and political drama, they will be treated as such and never as criminals," FARC lead negotiator Ivan Marquez said.
Under the terms of the deal, the U.N. children's agency UNICEF and the International Organization for Migration will oversee the procedure to ensure both sides stick to their promises. All the illegal armed groups in Colombia- rebels and right-wing paramilitaries, along with criminal gangs - have forcibly recruited teenagers or taken on under-age volunteers, especially in remote rural areas with few job opportunities.
The groups use children as messengers, informants, cooks and porters. FARC rebels also trained them to use weapons, grenades and mortars and to plant home-made landmines. Marquez said the FARC had never recruited minors under 15, but many had arrived orphaned by paramilitary violence or fleeing from "mistreatment and the absence of a future." Poverty and famine among Colombia's youth was a greater problem than the existence of minors in FARC camps, he added. A deadline for a final peace deal was missed in March, but Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said last Wednesday his government hoped to conclude a peace deal with the FARC rebels "in the very near future".
Colombian FARC rebels agree to let minors under 15 leave ranks
A decade ago, battles between paramilitary groups and their most bitter enemies, the Marxist rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), took place almost every week as the two sides fought for territorial control. The unrelenting violence prompted an exodus of thousands of villagers from the farmlands around the town of La Hormiga and across Putumayo during the peak of violence in early 2000s. "We were caught in the middle of the crossfire," Portillo, a farmer and father of two children, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "Once the FARC told us we had to leave as there would be a confrontation with the paramilitaries. They gave us two hours to leave. The whole village left, 80 to 100 people," he said, recalling the first of four times his family had to flee.
More than five decades of conflict have forced 6.7 million Colombians to flee their homes, many of them poor farmers like Portillo, making the country home to the second biggest internally displaced population after Syria. Some of the land left behind was abandoned, left idle for years as farmers sought refuge in nearby towns. Other land was seized by paramilitary forces with farmers often pressured by the armed groups to sell out at cut-rate prices. The government itself estimates that 6.5 to 10 million hectares of land - up to 15 percent of Colombian territory - have been abandoned or illegally acquired through violence, extortion and fraud.
HOMECOMING
Portillo is one of the lucky ones, back on his land as part of a 10-year government program launched in 2011 to return millions of hectares of land, address unequal land distribution and reduce rural poverty. The national effort to restore ownership and tenure is unfolding as peace talks, now in their third year, continue between the government and the FARC, the country's largest guerrilla group, in Cuba. How Colombia ensures those who were displaced can return safely to their lands and rebuild their lives is a measure of state territorial control and prospects for lasting peace in war-torn provinces like Putumayo, experts said. Under a historic land restitution law passed five years ago, the government of Juan Manuel Santos has handed back 200,000 hectares of land, together with land titles awarded by judges, benefiting about 20,000 Colombians. But this accounts for just a fraction of the millions of hectares of land stolen and abandoned.
Of the 80,000 land claims lodged so far with the government authorities less than half are currently being processed, hampered by bureaucratic red tape and sorting out who legally owns disputed and abandoned land. For Portillo, returning to his plot of land means the promise of a better future. Under the land restitution scheme, he has received a grant, fertilizer and seeds, and an agronomist visits the pepper farm every month to provide technical support. "When we came back everything was covered by the jungle. We lost everything. We had to start all over again," said Portillo, as he and his wife tend to rows of pepper trees surrounded by dense jungle where parrots and monkeys chatter. "The land is how I breathe, live and survive. Working the land is the only thing I know how to do. I can't survive in the city. I can only beg for food there." Portillo, 56, hopes the hip-high pepper trees will bear their first harvest in eight months time, bringing in an income of about 990,000 Colombian pesos (US$335) a month, nearly double the monthly minimum wage.
LINGERING FEAR
Who are the Farc?
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc, after the initials in Spanish) are Colombia's largest rebel group. They were founded in 1964 as the armed wing of the Communist Party and follow a Marxist-Leninist ideology. Their main founders were small farmers and land workers who had banded together to fight against the staggering levels of inequality in Colombia at the time. While the Farc have some urban groups, they have always been an overwhelmingly rural guerrilla organisation.
Two armed Farc rebels monitoring the Berlin pass
How many Farc fighters are there?
The security forces estimate that there are between 6,000 and 7,000 active fighters within the ranks of the Farc. They think there are another 8,500 civilians who make up the Farc's support network. This is down considerably from the estimated 20,000 active fighters they are believed to have had around 2002.
How are they organised?
The rebels are organised in small tactical groups that in turn make up larger fighting units which are organised in regional "blocs". They are controlled by the Secretariat, a group of less than a dozen top commanders who devise the overarching strategy of the Farc. The Farc's top leader is Rodrigo Londono Echeverri, better know by his alias Timochenko.
Why did they take up arms?[
