6,000 CHILDREN WAGE BRAZIL DRUG WAR

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil--The crowning achievement of Rodrigo X's young life
wasn't graduating from school or scoring a goal on the soccer field--it was
throwing his first hand grenade.

The 16-year-old is a combatant in this city not officially at war, but where
hundreds of children and adolescents die each year from small-arms fire.

''I looked to the street and the police were coming,'' the teenage gang
member told researchers. ''I started exchanging fire with them. I jumped
over the wall and got close, then BOOM everything shook. It was the first
time I threw a grenade. It was good.''

The story of Rodrigo X--a name used to protect the teenager's identity--is
part of a new report, ''Child Combatants in Armed Organized Violence in Rio
de Janeiro,'' by British anthropologist Luke Dowdney. Funded by the Ford
Foundation, Save the Children Sweden and UNESCO, the report is the focus of
a two-day international conference that opened Monday.

According to Dowdney, some 6,000 children and adolescents between the ages
of 10 and 18 serve as ''soldiers'' in the drug gangs that control most of
the city's many shantytowns, or favelas.

Dowdney said his study began at a UN conference on child soldiers last year
in Florence, Italy.

''I stood up with two pictures, one of a kid with an M-16 and the other
holding a pistol and a hand grenade and they told me: 'Those aren't child
soldiers. That's gang violence,''' Dowdney explained. ''Then I asked: 'Well,
where do you draw the line involving armed conflict?' ''

Between 1978 and 2000, 49,913 people died from small-arms fire in Rio de
Janeiro, the vast majority between the ages of 15 and 24, Dowdney said.