Every day in Colombia, 10 children are abducted by drug cartels, according to the Ministry of Justice. Only one of these children will ever escape, and the other nine children will soon die.
According to Enable USA, a non-profit organization based in Atlanta geared toward providing assistance to these children, Colombia remains the largest production center in the world for cocaine. To fuel cocaine production, cartels regularly abduct children ages 12 to 18 from rural areas of the country to work in their factories. These children witness their parents murdered, reducing the impetus for future escape. They are worked to exhaustion, repeatedly raped and eventually murdered.
Emory University's Latino Student Organization recently teamed up with Enable USA, with the hopes of raising awareness of the atrocities committed by drug cartels on Colombia's children.
Phil Johnston, president of Enable USA, said he hopes to raise awareness of the issue within the community. Through working together with Emory sophomore Brian Delgado, vice president of external affairs for LSO, Johnston said he hopes to take strides in making cocaine users in the United States understand the impact of their actions.
"The idea is to have an informational campaign that is primarily energized by college students," Johnston said. "And we want to help them disseminate the information about what is going on in Colombia, so that those people who are users of cocaine will hear this information and hopefully withdraw from using the drug."
According to Johnston, 20 million users of cocaine exist in the United States. He said these users fuel the production centers of Colombia, for without American users' high demand of the drug, there would be no booming business.
For the last decade, Enable USA has run a rehabilitation center in Medellin, Colombia for children who managed to escape the brutality of the cartels.
The center, called Imagination, focused on providing a safe haven for these children and re-establishing the victims' faith, so that they could return to the cities.
Johnston said he and his team decided that it would be better for the children of Colombia if Enable USA focused on helping Americans using cocaine to recognize that their consumption of the drug is the primary killer of these children.
Delgado elaborated on the steps taken by LSO to raise awareness on Emory's campus.
"Mostly, right now, we're trying to raise consciousness by word of mouth and through social media," he said. "Basically what's happening is the demand here is fueling the violence over there, and lives are being lost by Colombians in order to satisfy the market."
Starting next semester, LSO will begin its sales of bracelets, which will be given to charity for escaped children. These bracelets will depict the Colombian flag, with the statement "Help Us Protect Our Children," serving as a symbol of support for the children in Colombia.
College senior Puja Shah shared her concern about the issue.
"I think it's obviously an ethical problem, but I think at the same time a bigger initiative needs to take place," Shah said. "If a child's life is at risk, who are we to use drugs? If you're going to use drugs at the risk of a child's life, how can you live with that?"
Both Enable USA and LSO realize it will take years to achieve their primary objective.
"We believe that the hardcore users of cocaine are going to continue whether they understand or don't understand their use of cocaine is killing these kids and their parents," Johnston said. "But we hope once the ones that are occasional users of it understand their implications of using cocaine they will withdraw from using it."
The organization hopes that by teaching the community to be aware of their actions, they will ultimately save the innocent lives of Colombia's youth.
– By Catherine Pilishvili
