BOGOTA (Reuters) – Colombia’s authorities should enhance efforts to cease armed teams from recruiting youngsters, because it pushes for peace and give up offers with rebels and crime gangs, suppose tank Worldwide Disaster Group mentioned on Friday, warning recruitment is rising.
Colombian leftist President Gustavo Petro has made “whole peace” – an finish to virtually six many years of battle which has killed a whole bunch of hundreds – a key coverage for his administration.
Whereas violence has declined following ceasefires with 4 unlawful armed teams, such organizations are utilizing this respiration house to additional cement themselves in communities throughout the nation, Disaster Group mentioned in a report, together with by way of the recruitment of minors.
“By all indications, recruitment has elevated because the announcement of the overall peace coverage,” Elizabeth Dickinson, senior Disaster Group analyst for Colombia, instructed Reuters.
Recruiting minors permits armed teams to spice up their navy would possibly and curbs resistance from the kids’s households and pals, who hope they might in the future return, the report mentioned.
Kids as younger as 12 are “being despatched to entrance strains of fight,” the report mentioned, citing interviews with residents, rights teams and navy officers.
The workplace of the federal government’s excessive commissioner for peace didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Greater than 16,000 minors have been recruited by armed teams in Colombia between 1985 and 2019, in keeping with a report final yr from the nation’s reality fee.
However the fee mentioned that quantity was doubtless low and the estimated actual determine might be larger than 40,000.
Colombia’s little one welfare company (ICBF) has documented 1,166 instances of kid recruitment since 2016, however the Disaster Group mentioned within the report that determine can be doubtless an undercount.
The ICBF mentioned in response to the report that it’s conscious of a sustained enhance within the recruitment of minors in recent times and noticed a 141% uptick between 2021 and 2022 within the want for its recruitment intervention program.
At the least 70 minors have been recovered by Colombia’s navy throughout the first 5 months of Petro’s presidency, the report added.
(Reporting by Oliver Griffin; Modifying by Alistair Bell)