Colombia: Armed Groups Expand Child Recruitment

By Human Rights Watch

Click to expand Image A 17-year-old boy recruited by the 33rd Front of the EMBF, a dissident group of the demobilized FARC, operating in Colombia’s Catatumbo region near the Venezuelan border. © 2026 Federico Ríos Escobar Child recruitment by armed groups has risen sharply in Colombia in recent years; exploiting poverty, social exclusion, and lack of education to lure children with promises of money, power, and prestige, and increasingly using social media to do so.Colombia has established a range of policies and strategies to prevent child recruitment, and protect and rescue children,…

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