Colombian armed groups forcibly recruited nearly 190 kids in 2023: report

Nearly 190 children as young as nine and mainly from Indigenous communities, were forcibly recruited by armed groups in Colombia last year, the country's rights ombudsman said Monday, denouncing a "war crime."

A total of 110 boys and 74 girls were wrested from their families, it said in a statement -- most of them aged 14 to 17, but some mere primary schoolers.

"Girls, boys and adolescents should no longer carry uniforms and weapons to fight a senseless war that has been going on for more than 60 years in the country," ombudsman Carlos Camargo said.

"The recruitment of girls, boys and adolescents is a war crime that must stop immediately," added the statement.

Most of the kids were taken by die-hard dissidents of the disbanded FARC Marxist guerrilla group; the rest by fighters of the ELN rebel group and the paramilitary United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), said the ombudsman's report.

The real numbers were likely higher, it added.

According to the state missing persons unit, requests to find 3,198 children had been filed in six decades of armed conflict between leftist guerrillas, rightwing paramilitaries, drug gangs and government forces.

President Gustavo Petro, the conflict-riddled South American country's first leftist president, has made it his mission to achieve "total peace," and is negotiating with the majority of armed groups still active in the territory.

Ceasefires are in place with the ELN and the EMC -- one of the main FARC dissident factions.

–TIMES/AFP