Bogotá, Oct 17 (EFE).- Colombian authorities expressed their concern on Thursday over the rising number of minors forcibly recruited by illegal armed groups during the first half of 2024.
The Ombudsman’s Office registered 159 cases in the first half of the year.
“There is an increase in the forced recruitment of children and adolescents… This is an under registry because there are many situations to consider that prevent us from having reliable information about this serious violation of human rights,” stated Lourdes Castro, Presidential Counsellor on Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law, at a press conference in Bogotá.
Castro pointed out that many cases go unregistered in certain regions due to “the threats that families and communities often receive.”
“The regions with the highest number of forced recruitments are those with disputes between various armed actors outside the law,” said Castro, adding that the most affected departments are Cauca and Nariño in the southwest.
She also expressed concern about the growth of this crime in Huila (south), Norte de Santander (north-east) and Bolívar (north).
The Ombudsman’s Office reported that 51% of the victims of forced recruitment are minors from Indigenous communities, 5% are Afro-Colombians, 13% do not belong to a specific ethnic group, and there is no information for 13% of the cases.
The director of the Colombian Family Welfare Institute, Astrid Cáceres, said the organization has a program for children “rescued from armed conflict and war exploitation.”
“To date, we have 338 children in our program,” she stated, highlighting a focus on Indigenous cases working with communities.
“We cannot allow them to be exploited in drug trafficking, nor can we continue to see them used in the context of armed conflict to transport weapons,” she added.
Between 1990 and 2017, armed groups recruited 16,238 minors in Colombia, according to data analyzed by the Truth Commission. EFE
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