On Monday, the UN accused the FARC dissidents of regularly recruiting minors and announced their inclusion in a “black list” with which pinpoints the worst violators of children’s rights in conflictwhich also includes the National Liberation Army (Eln).
In 2021, the organization verified 231 serious violations once morest minors in Colombia, including the recruitment of 123 children between the ages of 12 and 17 as combatants.
Most of them (75) were used by the dissident groups of the Farc, although there were also cases in the Eln, the Gaitanista Self-Defense Forces of Colombia and the Clan del Golfo, among other armed organizations.
several of those children died or were injured during their activity with the armed groupswhile at least three were victims of sexual violence, according to the UN in an annual report in which it analyzes the situation of minors affected by twenty armed conflicts around the world.
In total, according to United Nations data, 31 children were killed and 39 seriously injured in Colombia during 2021, most of them Cauca, Chocó and Antioquia.
In the report, the UN expresses its concern regarding the increase in serious violations of children’s rights in the country, which also include kidnappings, attacks on schools and sexual assaults by combatants.
The UN had removed the guerrilla group itself from this list as a result of the demobilization and release of minors that it carried out within the framework of the peace process.
international context
As a whole, the United Nations verified this year almost 24,000 serious violations of children’s rights in conflict situations around the world, with Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories – Somalia, Syria and Yemen – as the worst scenarios.
Wars such as those in Ukraine and Ethiopia have not yet been recorded in this report, although the person in charge of Children and Armed Conflict, Virginia Gamba, made it clear that there is already information on a large number of cases.
The figures are in line with what was seen in 2020, but are somewhat below what was recorded in 2021, although this may be due in part to a lack of information. For example, in Afghanistan the UN was only able to collect data during the first part of the year, until the Taliban seized power.
Among other trends, the UN highlights a sharp increase in the number of kidnappings and sexual assaultswhich rose 20% following soaring already last year.
Gamba blamed much of this on terrorist groups operating in Africa such as Boko Haram and affiliates of the Islamic State (IS), which he said are systematically kidnapping girls for sex trafficking and they end up being raped or forcibly married to their fighters.
In its “black list” the UN includes all these groups and many others, but also Armies of various states such as Burma, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iraq, Somalia, South Sudan or Syria.