More than 100 minors have been forcibly recruited and used by armed groups over the past two years in Colombia, a country that has seen a sharp upsurge in violence since the 2016 peace agreement, we learned on Friday, February 11 from official sources.
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The Office of the Defender of Rights, a state entity that oversees the issue of respect for human rights,
“has become aware of information on 114 cases of forced recruitment, use and exploitation of children and adolescents since March 2020 “
, says a press release.
"This figure is only a sample of the phenomenon, clearly underestimated, given that this crime against children is rarely reported by families who fear reprisals from armed groups"
, explains the text.
Throughout Colombia's sixty years of armed conflict, far-left guerrillas and far-right paramilitaries have forcibly recruited thousands of minors.
According to the Office of the Defender of Rights, which denounces the persistence of
"one of the most heinous behaviors committed against children in our country"
, the majority (83%) of the 114 victims for two years lived in rural areas, 20% were indigenous and 4% Afro-Colombian.
The main responsible for these actions are the dissidents of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC, Marxist) who reject the peace agreement (68.3%), the National Liberation Army (ELN, Guevarist), the last recognized guerrilla in the country (6.5%), and the heirs of paramilitary groups demobilized in 2006 (4.7%).
These armed groups are active in several isolated areas of the country where they compete for control and revenue from drug trafficking.
According to the NGO Indepaz, the FARC dissidents number some 5,000 fighters, including many new recruits.
Read alsoColombia: Farc take up arms
The commanders of what was once the most powerful guerrilla in the Americas have been under investigation by a court of peace (JEP) since August for having recruited nearly 19,200 minors between 1996 and 2016, a period which concentrates the majority of cases .
400 victims have already been identified.
The court has detailed information on 332 of them, 70% of whom were recruited when they were 14 or younger.
At least 68 of these minors denounced
“different types of sexual violence”
, mainly
“forced abortions”
and
“violent carnal attacks”
.
On Friday, the court announced that it would also investigate violence perpetrated against minors in the LGBTIQ+ community.
The JEP wants
to "make visible the life experiences, the demands for justice and the damage suffered - hitherto silenced - of the victims of recruitment with a diverse sexual orientation"
, explained the magistrate Lily Rueda, quoted in a press release.
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