By Paulina Mesa Loaiza, COLOMBIA +20, EL ESPECTADOR, July 12, 2025
(Translated by Eunice Gibson, CSN Volunteer Translator)
A recent report by the U.N. Secretary-General on childhood and conflict in Colombia identifies six ways children are victimized by the armed groups. Recruitment and sexual violence in the attacks were more frequent in 2024.
Nine years have passed since the signing of the Peace Agreement, and this week six members of the FARC’s last Secretariat admitted to the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) that they had been responsible for forced recruitment. They characterized it as a “deep wound” of the war; yet here in this country now, the same crimes continue to be committed against boy, girls, and teenagers, more and more directly and intensely.
The armed conflict is also being recycled for the youngest ones; as to violence against children in Colombia, the tendency has been increasing for five consecutive years. Recent reports from different social organizations and from the United Nations show that the armed actors are emerging or getting stronger in the countryside, they are continuing to recruit, to rape, to murder, to mutilate, and attack boys and girls. That has been recorded in the Colombia chapter of the Annual Report on children in the armed conflict by the Secretary-General of the United Nations, which gathers information from 2024.
The panorama is depressing when you learn that since 2019, the violence against children has increased exponentially. In 2024 alone, 646 serious violations were reported, affecting 513 girls, boys, and teenagers throughout the country. That number, compared to 2023, represents an increase in attacks of 42%.
The Secretary-General’s Report determined that, of the total number of children who were victims of the conflict, 317 were boys, 189 were girls, and there were seven children whose sex was not reported. 195 were indigenous children, 47 were Afro-Colombian, and 13 of the children were of Venezuelan nationality.
The statistics and the realities in the countryside speak of a disproportionate effect on the indigenous and Afro populations in the country. For Hilda Molano, Coordinator of Coalico (Coalition Against the Connection of Boys, Girls, and Young People with the Armed Conflict in Colombia), this affects the lives of the children, but it also affects entire communities. “This tears the social fabric. When we talk about ethnic peoples, and the boys and girls end up in a dynamic that is outside of their communities, this places the survival of the peoples at risk. A violent event not only affects the boy or the girl, but also the family and the community as a whole, the society, and all of us as a nation,” she pointed out.
(Charts and graphs omitted.)
Recruitment is part of the expansion of the armed gangs.
But the figures that the report reveals actually appear reserved in the face of the real magnitude of the situation. More and more areas of the country are reporting attacks against children, and experts are explaining this as one of the effects of the territorial expansion and consolidation of the armed gangs. The U.N. Report shows that the ELN, the Clan del Golfo (They call themselves the Gaitanista Army of Colombia.), and the FARC Dissidents are responsible for the commission of serious violations, including recruitment, murders, mutilations, sexual violence, attacks on schools and hospitals, kidnappings, and obstruction of humanitarian access.
In the case of recruitment, the U.N. Secretary-General’s 2024 analysis registered that 453 cases were reported, which represents a 64% increase compared with 2023, when there were complaints of 277 cases. The document also points out that the main organizations responsible for recruitment are the FARC Dissidents, who were responsible for 326 recruitments, followed by the ELN with 56 cases, Clan del Golfo with 39, the Border Commandos with 15, and the Segunda Marquetalia, with 14 cases.
In the “Total Peace” policy that President Gustavo Petro has implemented, the result is that they talk in the dialog tables about the issue and make commitments to stop the violence against boys and girls. For example, in one of the most advanced peace processes, the negotiation with the Communeros of the South, the delegates agreed on a work group to take care of young boys that are recruits. In the Laboratory of Urban Peace in Buenaventura, they signed an agreement with the principal criminal gangs to stop using boys and girls and teenagers in illegal activities. However, the dialogs in the port city seem to be at a standstill now, and some conflict experts recognize that there are some complicated issues that sometimes are not prioritized, and the situations keep happening.
For Julien Hayois, a UNICEF specialist in protection, there are several factors that allow us to contextualize the violence against children by the armed actors. “This is also tied up with the restructuring of the groups, the territorial expansion, and their need to strengthen their ranks. Besides that, there’s a series of structural factors that favor these serious violations. It happens repeatedly in the areas with the highest levels of poverty, with minimal presence of the government; there’s a limited chance to get services and educational opportunities, or a job, for teenagers and young people,” she explained.
In a general look at the panorama, since 2019 it’s been verified that 1,206 boys, girls, and teenagers left their families and communities to become involved with the armed conflict.
“Once the children enter the ranks of the armed gangs, or start to be used by them, that brings in other crimes and serious violations within the organization, with things like sexual violence, mistreatment, children that try to escape and are killed, children killed in combat. We are also seeing that the threats have more dramatic consequences like suicide, which happens in many indigenous communities. Families also have had to be displaced because their only way to prevent recruitment was to leave the area, with all the difficulties that includes, in order to get integrated into a new community,” says Hayois, of UNICEF.
The youngest girls are the most recruited
Of all the children recruited in 2014, 59 suffered additional violence. 22 were killed, 14 were mutilated, and 23 were victims of sexual violence. “Frequently boys, girls, and teenagers are used as lookouts, and forced to commit crimes like extortion, being hired killers, drug trafficking, and other activities before they were recruited,” the U.N. Report noted.
Added to that is the fact that children are being used for activities in the war. Molano, the Coordinator of Coalico, points out that they are used in cases related to handling drones. “The armed groups are taking advantage of the abilities that the boys, girls, and teenagers have. What could be a skill used for living ends up being instrumentalized for keeping them in the dynamic of the conflict.”
Other damage done by recruitment of children can be seen in the teachers that, out in the countryside, may try to rescue the children from the war. Molano explains it this way, “It’s the levels of frustration that we see with the teachers in the countryside, their distress at not being able to do anything more to keep these situations from happening, or taking on the consequences when they try to do something. Many teachers have been displaced, threatened, and harassed, and it’s evident that this has to do with their trying to keep the gangs away from the children.”
The U.N. Report stresses that the girls are being recruited and used at ages earlier than the boys. 47% of the girls recruited and exploited in 2024 were between the ages of 10 and 14, while 23% of the boys were in that age range.
“That could be directly associated with cases of sexual exploitation, or violences based on gender, or sexual violence. The younger the girls are, the clearer is the objective, because it’s sexual exploitation specifically that’s behind these cases. The girls now being recruited or used by the armed groups are younger and younger,” added Molano.
For Hayois, the Specialist from UNICEF, it’s clear that girls are suffering from the armed conflict in a different way. Specifically, in the case of sexual violence, the Secretary-General’s Report states that all 33 of the victims were young girls and teenage girls who suffered sexual assault, sexual abuse, forced planning, or forced underage unions, “This is just the tip of the iceberg. Some cases are not reported because of the stigma that exists around sexual violence, like the time limitation for filing a complaint, or security for one who reports. There is limited possibility of obtaining information. The differential in damage is marked, and there is very serious under-reporting of these cases,” says the expert.
The Report observes that, in the same way, they have verified cases of sexual violence perpetrated by the ELN (12), the FARC Dissidents (12), Clan del Golfo (7), and unidentified offenders (2).
With regard to the departments, Cauca continues to be the territory most violent toward girls, boys, and teenagers. In 2024 there were more than 200 cases of attacks against children.
The war Is flaring up again in the north and south of Cauca. This week several organized groups led by women asked the Central Command Staff commanded by “Iván Mordisco” and the ELN guerrillas to stop the fighting in the countryside. In an open letter, they also asked President Petro to open direct channels for dialog, demand immediate humanitarian commitments, and propose specific actions to de-escalate the conflict.
That’s happening while the “Mordisco” Dissidents a few days ago announced a new front in the war and called it “Andrés Patiño” to make a special incursion into the mountains of Colombia. Besides that, in Guaviare they are fighting for control of the countryside with the dissidents of “Calarcá Córdoba”. All this has provoked killings, confinements, and armed control.
There are more and more territories where children are affected directly and openly by the conflict. Just in 2022 and 2024 the number of municipalities affected by serious violations increased by 87%, passing from 70 to 140 municipalities. Last year, in some departments, they even reported twice as many cases. 66% of the serious violations were centered on the Pacific coast and in departments bordering Venezuela.
7,014 boys and girls have been hurt by attacks on their schools.
Attacks on schools by the armed gangs increased in 2024, passing from 27 to 42 cases. They included threats, attacks on teachers, damage to infrastructure, and installation of explosive artefacts.
They have also identified an increase in the use of schools as shields or trenches in combats, a place to spend the night, or to store weapons, among other things. According to the Report, around 35 schools were used for military purposes by the FARC Dissidents, the Border Commanders, the Clan del Golfo, ELN, and the Armed Forces of Colombia.
“That puts the students, the teachers, and the parents at risk. As a consequence, many times schools have to close for long periods, and that affects the children’s lives. That often leads to students’ dropping out of school permanently,” stressed Julien Hayois, UNICEF Specialist in protection.
All in all, 7,042 children have been affected by use of schools and attacks on schools.
How can the boys and girls be protected?
One of the great advances recognized by the Secretary-General is the JEP’s charging the former FARC commanders for their war crimes against more than 18,000 girls, boys, and teenagers. However, that achievement has to be accompanied by several recommendations, such as access to justice for the victims of the serious violations.
For Hayois, it’s important to increase the presence of the government, with services like protection for complainants, and adapting that to communities with an ethnic focus. This could be an answer to the people’s lack of confidence in the government; it would improve the reporting of violations.
Among the recommendations in the Report, they highlight a strategy for the prevention of recruitment and the budgeting of adequate funding for its implementation. The Secretary-General calls for the Armed Forces to stop organizing civic-military activities that involve boys, girls, and teenagers. In the same way, he calls for the parties negotiating in the peace dialogs to consider including measures for the protection of children in their agreements. Meanwhile, social organizations are continuing to measure the pulse of the violence against children, and the panorama is not encouraging for the closing of this year. The call continues to be urgent and insistent for the government and responsible entities to pay attention to the children.