{"id":1651,"date":"2025-07-09T21:39:03","date_gmt":"2025-07-09T21:39:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/2025\/07\/09\/never-touched-a-gun-colombia-fighters-step-up-child-soldier-recruitment\/"},"modified":"2025-07-09T21:39:03","modified_gmt":"2025-07-09T21:39:03","slug":"never-touched-a-gun-colombia-fighters-step-up-child-soldier-recruitment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/2025\/07\/09\/never-touched-a-gun-colombia-fighters-step-up-child-soldier-recruitment\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Never touched a gun\u2019: Colombia fighters step up child soldier recruitment"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The last time Marta saw her 14-year-old son was three months ago \u2013 he was wearing rebel army fatigues and holding a rifle as he marched down the street with the other child soldiers.<\/p>\n

She ran to the commanding officer and begged him to release her boy, who had been abducted nine months earlier in the middle of the night from their home in eastern Colombia at age 13. The officer, part of a dissident group of the now-demobilised Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC<\/a>, waved her away, threatening to shoot her if she didn\u2019t leave.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll I do is pray and cry and cry and cry and ask God to get my boy out of there,\u201d said Marta, who asked to remain anonymous in order to share her family\u2019s experience safely.<\/p>\n

The 40-year-old mother is not alone. Hundreds of mothers across Colombia have lost children to similar armed groups, either through abduction or coercion.<\/p>\n

In its annual report for 2024, the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) warned that Colombia faces its worst humanitarian outlook since the 2016 peace deal with the FARC rebel group. It drew special attention to surging child recruitment by armed groups, finding that 58 percent of those living in conflict zones cited it as the top risk in their communities.<\/p>\n

As Colombia\u2019s long-running and complex conflicts continue to escalate, with multiple ceasefires and dialogues between the state and armed groups collapsing this year, criminal organisations increasingly rely on underage soldiers to bolster their ranks.<\/p>\n

And there is little being done to stop them.<\/p>\n

Marta said she is too afraid to report her son\u2019s abduction to the authorities after the armed group made a clear threat when they took him: if she tells the police, they will execute her boy and then come for the rest of the family.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have to let him be. I tell myself he is in God\u2019s hands, so as not to put my other children at risk \u2026 I have to leave everything in God\u2019s hands,\u201d Marta said. \u201cI don\u2019t sleep, I don\u2019t eat. Sometimes I have no will to do anything, but I have three smaller children with me. And they need me, they need me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gloria, a 52-year-old mother from eastern Colombia who also asked to remain anonymous, shared with Al Jazeera a similar story to Marta\u2019s. In June, her 16-year-old son was taken in the middle of the night and forced to join another armed group.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m desperate, I don\u2019t know what to do,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Gloria found out about her son\u2019s abduction after receiving a call from a distressed family member. They told her rebel fighters had forcibly entered the house where her son was staying and taken him away.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey recruited him to fight, and the boy had never even touched a gun,\u201d she said. \u201cHe doesn\u2019t know what he\u2019s doing, nothing. At home, we never had any sort of guns.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her family fled their rural hamlet in eastern Colombia earlier this year amid intense fighting between the National Liberation Army (ELN) and dissidents of the now-demobilised FARC.<\/p>\n

But after arriving at a refugee shelter in the nearest city, they struggled to make ends meet.<\/p>\n

Her son tried unsuccessfully to look for work in Bogota and, unable to join his mother at the shelter due to space, he returned to their family home.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe had to go back [to our hometown], and there they took him by force,\u201d Gloria said.<\/p>\n

Unlike with Marta, Gloria\u2019s son was returned home in late June following intense negotiation efforts by local community members and the ICRC.<\/p>\n

From 2021 to 2024, officially documented child recruitments jumped by 1,000 percent, increasing from 37 to 409 \u2013 but the real number is likely much higher, according to the International Crisis Group (ICG).<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re seeing a generation of children lost into these networks of criminality for whom they bear little importance,\u201d Elizabeth Dickinson, senior Colombia analyst at ICG, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

She authored a recent report detailing the scourge of child recruitment in Colombia. It found that minors are often given the most basic training before being sent to the front lines, used as cannon fodder to shield higher ranks.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe casualty rates of kids in combat over the last year have been extremely high,\u201d said Dickinson.<\/p>\n

It is difficult to estimate how many child soldiers are killed annually since monitoring groups do not distinguish between civilian and soldier deaths when it comes to children.<\/p>\n

However, according to the 2024 UN Secretary-General\u2019s Annual Report on Children and Armed Conflict, at least 14 of the 262 children (176 boys and 86 girls) recruited in 2023 were killed, though rights workers said this number is much higher.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe majority of those children remain associated (136), 112 were released or escaped, and 14 were killed. Some 38 children were used in combat roles,\u201d according to the report, which noted that one child was recruited on two separate occasions by different armed groups.<\/p>\n

The report said 186 children were recruited by the\u00a0Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia \u2013 People\u2019s Army (FARC-EP) dissident groups, 41 by the National Liberation Army (ELN), and 22 by the Gulf Clan<\/a> (also known as Autodefensas Gaitanistas de Colombia).<\/p>\n

\u201cAccording to the Colombian Family Welfare Institute, 213 children formerly associated with armed groups entered its protection programme,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n

As a result, families who lose children to recruitment endure unbearable pain, fearing that their child may be dead or injured.<\/p>\n

By force or coercion<\/h2>\n

While cases of forced recruitment are far too common, in most cases, minors \u201cvoluntarily\u201d enlist to fight after being lured in with false promises, according to ICG\u2019s Dickinson.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re talking about armed and criminal groups winding a fantastical tale to these children that it sounds so much better than their normal life, that they leave of their own volition,\u201d said Dickinson.<\/p>\n

Groups use TikTok, WhatsApp and Facebook to sell a glamourised image of life in arms, according to Dickinson. Boys are targeted with videos showing flashy motorbikes, guns and money. The armed groups target young girls by luring them with promises of romance, empowerment, education and in some cases, even cosmetic surgery.<\/p>\n

But children face a very different reality after enlisting and are used by senior-ranking members to do their dirty work. Seen as more pliable, minors are given tasks like dismembering bodies or patrolling remote jungle areas for days on end. Child sexual abuse is also rampant.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll [child recruitment] is forced even if it wasn\u2019t done using force, even if it wasn\u2019t through coercion,\u201d said Hilda Molano, coordinator at the Coalition Against the Involvement of Children and Young People in the Armed Conflict in Colombia (COALICO).<\/p>\n

COALICO provides assistance to families and children affected by recruitment and helps compile official data on the phenomenon. Molano says the number of cases officially registered and verified is likely less than 10 percent of the reality.<\/p>\n

She said child recruitment is at its worst level since 2009, when the decimated FARC rebels sought to recoup lost manpower.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a cultural problem that transcends the boy and the girl of today,\u201d Molano told Al Jazeera, citing historical cycles of conflict that have dogged Colombia for decades.<\/p>\n

The COALICO coordinator described how violence has become normalised, and with it, the acceptance of illicit activities as a means of escaping poverty. Many of Colombia\u2019s youth view joining an armed group as the only way to improve their quality of life and gain independence.<\/p>\n

\u201cYoung people in Colombia have very few spaces where they feel like they have a voice, feel like they\u2019re heard,\u201d explained Dickinson.<\/p>\n

With child recruitment rising, experts warn that stopping it is a mammoth task that would have to address poverty, armed conflict and cultural norms.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe cannot save everyone. It\u2019s a sad reality,\u201d said Molano.<\/p>\n

But that has not stopped her from fighting recruitment when she can; Molano believes that protecting children must start at the grassroots level.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe solution lies in daily support, in the case-by-case, because otherwise, we don\u2019t make a difference. In the masses we get lost,\u201d explained Molano.<\/p>\n

As with Marta, who still holds out hope that her son will return, hundreds of mothers across the country remain at the mercy of armed groups, praying to see their children healthy and living once again.<\/p>\n

\u201cI trust in God that he is alive. I also trust in [the group], that they will not harm him. You cannot imagine the agony that I have to live through,\u201d said Marta.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The last time Marta saw her 14-year-old son was three months ago \u2013 he was wearing rebel army fatigues and holding a rifle as he marched down the street with the other child soldiers. She ran to the commanding officer and begged him to release her boy, who had been abducted nine months earlier in … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1652,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1651\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}