Doctoral student Mar铆a Alejandra Guti茅rrez-Torres. Courtesy photo.
鈥淲e have to believe in peace.鈥�
That鈥檚 the conviction driving the work of Mar铆a Alejandra Guti茅rrez-Torres, a second-year doctoral student at the Boston College School of Social Work who is developing an intervention to help young girls recruited by armed groups rebuild their lives after war.
Her work traces back to a visit to rural Colombia in 2018, when she met a woman who had raised 11 babies left in her care by guerrilla fighters. The woman called them the 鈥渃hildren of war.鈥�
"I really wanted to know how these children of war didn鈥檛 go back to armed conflict because they don鈥檛 have a lot of options,鈥� said Guti茅rrez-Torres, who spent the first 26 years of her life in Colombia.聽
Today, she is working to answer that question, which took shape while she was studying medicine, peacebuilding, and government affairs at the University of the Andes. Her dissertation focuses on adolescent girls who were recruited into armed conflict in Colombia as children and are now trying to reintegrate into civilian life.
Guti茅rrez-Torres said girls recruited by armed groups face unique forms of stigma once they re-enter civil society. Some have experienced sexual violence or forced abortions. Others have children of their own, making it hard to return to school.
Her project will unfold in three phases: interviewing former child soldiers to assess their needs, co-developing an intervention with their input, and piloting the approach. The goal, she said, is to ensure that 鈥渘o child is claimed by war twice.鈥�
.Mar铆a Alejandra Guti茅rrez-Torres. Courtesy photo.
鈥淥ne thing is what I think that they need, what I have been reading in papers and newspapers,鈥� said Guti茅rrez-Torres, whose research is supported by a $10,000 award from the Yale Institute for Global Health. 鈥淏ut another thing is what actually happens in the field and what they actually need.鈥�
Guti茅rrez-Torres is working under the leadership of Salem Professor in Global Practice Theresa Betancourt, who has spent more than two decades studying the lives of children affected by armed conflict. She recently returned from Sierra Leone, where she worked alongside her mentor to learn how to build, adapt, and implement interventions that improve the lives of children and families affected by war.
鈥淚 have been able to see all these challenges and write them down for the future so that I really understand what kind of things can happen and how to solve them,鈥� said Guti茅rrez-Torres. 鈥淚鈥檝e learned how to be flexible, network with people from different countries, and understand how important it is to work with communities themselves.鈥�
Her commitment to this work is rooted in a belief that opportunity carries responsibility. She was lucky. She grew up in a loving family that supported her dreams and gave her the chance to pursue three degrees in her home country, culminating in a medical degree in 2024.
Now she wants to give back to those who weren鈥檛 so lucky. 鈥淚t鈥檚 my responsibility and my duty to give to the people that weren鈥檛 as fortunate as me,鈥� she said.聽
Ultimately, Guti茅rrez-Torres hopes to use her findings to create a non-governmental organization focused on helping young women rebuild their lives following recruitment by armed groups.
But she measures success in more personal terms: whether it helps just one young woman find a healthy path forward.聽
鈥淚f I can have a little impact, even if it鈥檚 in one girl, that would be enough for me,鈥� she said. 鈥淗aving motivation to go back into civil society because of the work that we鈥檙e going to do鈥攖hat鈥檚 the dream.鈥�
It鈥檚 her belief in this work that makes peace worth pursuing. As Guti茅rrez-Torres put it: 鈥淚 think that my job is a moral imperative.鈥�