By Sara Valentina Quevedo Delgado, EL TIEMPO, November 19, 2025
(Translated by Eunice Gibson, CSN Volunteer Translator)
A 16-year-old girl was the victim of sexual violence while in the ranks of the Dissidents; another, aged 13, and a young indigenous girl of 15 were among the 15 children who, according to Forensic Medicine, were killed in three bombings—and one combat—by the Armed Forces against “Mordisco’s” encampments.
Why did we just now find out about the deaths of seven children in the Guaviare operation and the bombing in Amazonas?
Their destruction in the so-called Operations Beta—military jargon—provoked an intense debate about the fine line between the principles of necessity and distinction in International Humanitarian Law and about the legitimacy of the use of force by the government against the Organized Armed Groups when, according to the Defense Minister, Pedro Sánchez, every member is a target susceptible to being killed in combat.
But besides that, it laid bare a scourge which, at the speed of the expansion of the armed groups—which now total more than 25,000 illegal fighters—has also grown in recent years. According to statistics from the Ombudsman’s Office, which warns that the numbers are seriously undercounted—as many families have been threatened and prefer not to complain—every 2 days in Colombia at least one minor child is dragged into the ranks of these organizations.
In 2024, 625 boys, girls, and teenagers were grabbed or forced to swell the ranks of the illegal armed groups. This year, according to the Inspector General, there are 162. Of those, 62% are male and 38% are female. For the girls, warns Íris Marín of the Ombudsman’s staff, the phenomenon has changed: they’re no longer mainly used for domestic work and are now subjected to sexual violence, and are incorporated into combat operations.
The number, however, says Marín, is still being put together, as there are technical barriers to verifying the cases in the countryside.
“Iván Mordisco’s” Dissidents (Central Command Staff) are the ones that most often resort to this crime (41%). Other unidentified dissident cells follow with 30%, other unidentified groups (15%), the ELN (5%), the “Clan del Golfo”—right now seated at the table negotiating with the government—with 3%, the “Segunda Marquetalia” with 3%, and organized crime gangs with 1%.
Boys and girls who are part of ethnic groups, coming from territories least protected by the government, are the main targets. 45% are indigenous, and 9% are AfroColombian.
Cauca, with 37 cases, is the department most affected, followed by Antioquia, with 20 cases, Chocó with 16, Nariño with 13, and Huila, with 11.
“An event to recall: in January, in Guaviare, there was combat between Mordisco’s Dissidents and those of Calarcá. Several children died there, many girls in a very cruel manner. Other children were left in the ranks of the Calarcá. When we demanded they be turned over to us, they said the children would rather stay in those ranks and they claimed that the prohibition of recruitment only applied to children under 15, which is not true,” the Ombudsman told EL TIEMPO, referring to the excuse the armed groups had hoisted in their attempt to justify their claim that retaining teenagers 16 and 17 years old is not a war crime.
According to a report by the Investigation and Charging Unit (UIA in Spanish), of the prosecutors at the JEP after the signing of the Peace Agreement with the FARC in 2016, 1,494 boys, girls, and teenagers had been victims of forced recruitment, a phenomenon that, during the 50 years of conflict with the now-defunct guerrillas, according to the transitional justice system, had more than 18,000 victims.
The stories behind the statistics
The X-Ray furnished by the agencies, nevertheless, is barely an outline of the reality testified to in the countryside that can never be quantified in its totality. In fact, some of the children who were killed in the bombing had not been listed in the Ombudsman’s registry of children recruited.
Behind these emerging statistics, there are stories like that of a 15-year-old boy from a vulnerable family, who, like his older brothers, was recruited. “They wanted to take me away to the group, but I got out of the territory first,” the child told United Nations Human Rights. Among the tactics that have been denounced, lures to attract children, even 11-year-olds, are social media campaigns to convince them, mainly on Tik-Tok and Facebook, media where the illegals take advantage of the social precariousness of the children joining the group as an alternative way of life and a way out of poverty.
“We have asked for regulation of social networks, because a lot of recruiting is being done there, with deceptive offers, money, motorbikes, cell phones. There has been resistance from the platforms, but it’s fundamental to make progress on regulation,” said a member of the Ombudsman’s staff.
The illegals have also coopted the ways of getting to the rural schools and have turned them into their operation centers. “The armed groups store their food in the school, and their men make use of the school bathroom and kitchen. We’re in class and they make the teacher cook for them. While we’re in class they look at us through the windows.”
And in the case of the girls, it’s habitual that they have to submit to sex slavery practices. “Once I was abused sexually by members of a group. Later the men in the group would search me out every weekend and they would take me by force to a place where I could be raped again by other men,” was one of the stories collected by the United Nations and others who had access to this newspaper.
The victimization is not limited to children. It also reaches their parents, grandparents, and other relatives who are forcibly displaced to avoid getting into a –sometimes impossible and lonely—task of getting the children back and where the government only helps out in a few cases.
“I was displaced along with my family so that my daughter would not be recruited by the group. Three of them found her and took her away. I was able to talk with my daughter on social networks, and she said that the group had her in their custody and that she would no longer be able to talk to me.”
“My son didn’t come home, and I went to look at his Facebook page and found a conversation with a supposed girlfriend telling him that she was going to go to an armed group. My son left home when I wasn’t there, with a backpack and he was gone. I found out later that he had been recruited,” some of these mothers relate.