Colombia’s armed groups and criminal gangs are preying on children as young as 10 near schools, says UN
BOGOTA - Colombian families are fleeing their homes to stop their children being recruited into rebel groups and drug-running gangs in a trend that is largely invisible, says the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR).
Nearly five decades of fighting between the government, leftist guerrillas and right-wing paramilitary groups have uprooted almost 4 million Colombians, of which roughly half are children, according to government figures. The South American nation is home to one of the highest internally displaced populations in the world.
“A leading cause of displacement is forced recruitment of children,” Terry Morel, head of UNHCR's office in Colombia, said in a news conference in Bogota on Friday.
“One of the biggest dangers facing boys and girls is forced recruitment that can involve pressure on families to hand over a boy or a girl or pressure on teachers to identify possible children for recruitment. Schools should be a place of refuge but we have witnessed schools being used by armed groups,” Morel said.
Colombia’s armed groups and criminal gangs prey on children as young as 10-years-old near schools, luring them to work as messengers and watchmen, she said.
It is estimated up to 40 percent of fighters from Colombia’s largest rebel group, the 9,000-strong Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, (FARC), are child soldiers.
Along with using children as messengers, informants, porters, and cooks, rebel groups also train children to use assault rifles, grenades and mortars and to plant home-made landmines. Girls are also used as sex slaves in rebel ranks, according to Human Rights Watch.
EASY TARGETS
Some 5,120 former child soldiers have entered government-run foster homes and reintegration programmes since 1999, according to the latest figures from Colombia’s state child protection agency, known as ICBF. Of that figure, 83 percent of child soldiers gave themselves up, often after escaping from rebel groups, while 17 percent were rescued by government armed forces usually after combats with the rebels.
With few jobs available in rural areas and the poverty rate at around 60 percent – double that of Colombia’s cities - children are drawn to join rebel armies by false promises of adventure, food and money.
“The problem of child recruitment is also about the lack of opportunities and the lack of state services that leaves very few options for young people,” Morel said.
Most at risk are children from Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities living along Colombia’s Pacific coast and the country’s southern provinces, where fighting between the rebels and government forces is concentrated and where rebels tend to have more power because the state military's presence is weak and sporadic there, Morel said.
Colombia’s displacement crisis shows no let up, the UNHCR says.
Some 143,000 Colombians fled their homes to escape violence related to the country’s armed conflict in 2011, according to official figures - up 9 percent from 2010. The number of mass displacements, defined as involving more than 50 people at any one time, is also on the rise, the UNHCR said.
“Even though there are no official figures for 2012, the trend shows that the figure for 2012 will be the same or higher,” Morel said.
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