Marta last saw her 14-year-old son three months ago when he marched down the street with the other children’s soldiers while wearing rebel army fatigues and a rifle.
She pleaded with the commander’s release of her 13-year-old boy, who had been abducted nine months earlier in the middle of the night from their home in eastern Colombia. The officer waved her away and threatened to shoot her if she didn’t leave the dissident branch of the now-demobilized Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
“I only pray and cry and cry and pray and ask God to remove my boy from there,” Marta said, who requested anonymity so she could share the story with her family safely.
The mother, who is 40, is not the only one. Similar armed groups have abused hundreds of Colombian mothers who have lost children through coercion or abduction.
Colombia’s worst humanitarian situation has been described in the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) annual report for 2024 since the FARC rebel group’s 2016 peace deal. It attracted particular attention because it revealed that 58% of people in conflict zones cited it as their community’s highest risk, a finding that attracted particular attention.
Criminal organizations increasingly rely on underage soldiers to bolster their ranks as Colombia’s long-running and complex conflicts continue to escalate, with numerous ceasefires and dialogues between the state and armed groups collapsing this year.
And little is being done to stop them.
After the armed group made a clear threat to the authorities when they took her son, Marta said she is too afraid to report it to them. They will execute him and then drive away for the rest of the family.
He needs to be, I tell him. I keep telling myself that everything is in God’s hands so that I don’t put my other children in danger, Marta said. I don’t eat or sleep. I sometimes feel like I have no desire to act, but I also have three smaller kids. And they require me.
Gloria, a 52-year-old mother from eastern Colombia who also requested anonymity, shared a story that resembles Marta’s. Her 16-year-old son was kidnapped in the middle of the night and forced to join a different armed group in June.
She said, “I’m desperate and unsure of what to do.”
After a distressed family member called Gloria, she learned about her son’s abduction. They claimed that her son’s rebel fighters had forcibly entered and taken him away from the house.
She claimed that the boy had never even touched a gun, and that they had recruited him to fight. He says, “He is doing nothing because he doesn’t know what he’s doing.” We never had any weapons at home.
In the wake of fierce fighting between the National Liberation Army (ELN) and dissidents of the now-demobilized FARC, her family fled their rural hamlet in eastern Colombia earlier this year.
They found it difficult to make ends meet once they arrived at a refugee shelter in the nearby city.
Her son returned to their family home after unsuccessful attempts to find employment in Bogota and unable to join his mother at the shelter due to space constraints.
He had to return to our hometown, where he was forcefully taken, Gloria said.
Gloria’s son was brought back home in late June after intensive negotiations with local community members and the ICRC, unlike Marta.
Officially documented child recruitments increased by 1, 000% between 2021 and 2024, from 37 to 409, but the International Crisis Group (ICG) predict that the actual number will be much higher.
According to Elizabeth Dickinson, senior Colombia analyst at ICG, “we’re seeing a generation of children lost into these networks of criminality for whom they bear little significance.”
In a recent report, she described Colombia’s child recruitment problem. It found that minors are frequently provided with the least amount of fundamental instruction before being deployed on the front lines and used as cannon fodder to protect higher ranks.
According to Dickinson, “children have suffered a lot of casualties in combat over the past year.”
Since monitoring organizations do not distinguish between child soldier and civilian deaths when it comes to children, it is difficult to estimate how many children are killed each year.
However, at least 14 of the 262 children recruited in 2023 were killed, according to the 2024 UN Secretary-General’s Annual Report on Children and Armed Conflict, despite rights activists’ claims that this figure is much higher.
The majority of those children are still associated (136), and 14 of them were killed. 112 of those children were released or escaped. According to the report, “some 38 kids were recruited into combat roles,” according to which two children were recruited by various armed groups on separate occasions.
According to the report, 186 children were recruited by the National Liberation Army (ELN), 41 by the National Liberation Army (ELN), and 22 by the Gulf Clan (also known as Autodefensas Gaitanistas de Colombia).
The Colombian Family Welfare Institute reported that 213 children who were previously associated with armed organizations had enrolled in its protection program.
Families who lose children to recruitment deal with agonizing pain because they worry that their child may pass away or be hurt.
by coercion or force
Although forced recruitment is far too prevalent, according to Dickinson of the ICG, minors “voluntarily” enlist in the fight in the majority of cases.
We’re talking about armed and criminal organizations winding a fantastical tale to these children so badly that they leave on their own volition, Dickinson said.
According to Dickinson, groups sell a glitzy image of life in arms using TikTok, WhatsApp, and Facebook. Videos of flashy motorcycles, weapons, and money are used to target boys. Young girls are drawn to them by the armed groups, who lure them with schemas of romance, empowerment, education, and, in some cases, even cosmetic surgery.
However, children are used by senior-ranking members to do their dirty work after enlisting in a completely different reality. Minors are tasked with dismembering bodies or for days on end patrolling remote jungle areas when they are more pliable. Child sexual abuse is also a common occurrence.
According to Hilda Molano, coordinator of the Coalition Against the Involvement of Children and Young People in Colombia (COALICO), “all child recruitment is forced even if it wasn’t done using force or through coercion.”
COALICO assists in the compilation of official information on the phenomenon and offers assistance to families and children who have been impacted by recruitment. More than 10% of the cases, according to Molano, are likely not officially registered and verified.
She claimed that since 2009, when the ravaged FARC rebels sought to recoup lost labor, there has been no child recruitment.
According to Molano, “it is a cultural problem that transcends the boy and the girl of today,” Molano cited decades-long conflict in Colombia.
The COALICO coordinator described the normalization of violence and the acceptance of illegal behavior as a means of escaping poverty. Youth in Colombia often believe that joining an armed group is the only way to improve their quality of life and become more independent.
Young people in Colombia don’t have many spaces where they can express themselves and feel heard, Dickinson said.
Experts warn that stopping it is a mammoth task that would include addressing poverty, armed conflict, and cultural norms given that child recruitment is rising.
“We can’t save everyone,” he said. It’s a depressing reality, Molano said.
Molano believes that protecting children must begin at the local level, despite the fact that she has not stopped herself from battling recruitment whenever she can.
“Daily support is the solution, in the case-by-case, because otherwise, it is irrelevant. We become lost in society, Molano said.
As with Marta, who is still hopeful that her son will return, hundreds of mothers across the nation are still subject to the control of armed groups, praying for their children to be happy and well once more.
