By Mario A. Flores
Impunity Watch Reporter, South America
BOGOTA, Colombia — The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said that over 100 indigenous families have fled their jungle reserves in Colombia’s southeastern province so far this year, in fear that armed groups will snatch their children for use as soldiers.
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) is on an aggressive recruitment campaign to replenish their dwindling ranks. The FARC have been weakened by a series of defeats at the hands of government forces in the past two years, prompting record numbers of guerrilla fighters to desert.
The terrorist group, financed largely by drug-trafficking proceeds, has waged a four-decade war against the Colombian army in a bid to take power. Recently, the threat of rebels forcibly taking away children to join their ranks has caused increasing numbers of people to flee their homes.
Local non-governmental organizations believe there are more than 6,000 child soldiers, with an average age of 12, in the FARC’s ranks. The rebels commonly use children as messengers and cooks and to plant landmines.
“There’s a very clear relationship between forced displacement and recruitment of children by illegal armed groups,” said Marie-Hélène Verney, the UNHCR spokeswoman in Colombia.
“We’re particularly concerned about the increase in forced recruitment of minors during the summer holidays when teachers are not in schools and when kids are pretty much left to their own devices,” said Verney.
Last year, more than 400 families fled their homes in the province of Vaupes, a large Amazon outpost which is home to 27 different indigenous groups, because of threats and the fear of having their children recruited by illegal armies, UNHCR said. Human rights organizations worry that the new violence is pushing even deeper into the Indians’ ancient lands.
The apparent stability in some largely pacified cities like the capital, Bogotá, belies the conflict in remote areas, where Indians find themselves at the mercy of armed groups.
Indigenous children, often living in isolated and far-flung jungle regions where rebels tend to have more power because the military’s presence is weak and sporadic, are particularly at risk of being forcibly recruited.
“Our rulers in Bogotá prefer to ignore that an entire section of the country is surviving, just barely, as if we are in the 16th century, when plunder and killing were the norm,” said Víctor Copete, who runs Chocó Pacífico, a foundation addressing the violence in Chocó, one of the nation’s poorest provinces.
Rebels in some guerrilla-controlled areas have been known to knock from door to door demanding that families hand over a son or daughter to fight.
Rebel groups even hold propaganda meetings in schools, public squares and host parties in areas they control, luring children with false promises of adventure, food, and money.
“Some children join illegal armed groups because they’ve been talked into it. For others it’s about getting new shoes — some don’t know what they’re getting themselves into,” Verney said.
A school teacher in one of the indigenous communities told UNHCR, “These children have no real hope and it makes them terribly vulnerable to other options some unscrupulous people may offer them.”
According to the United Nations, Colombia has about four million internal refugees, second in number only to Sudan, with Indians bearing a disproportionate share of the suffering. The Colombian government puts the figure at around 2.7 million displaced people.
Displaced women from the Embera indigenous ethnic group.
Photo by Moises Saman for The New York Times
For more information, please see:
Reuters – Colombian Indians flee threat of forcible recruitment in rebel ranks – UNHCR – 19 August 2009
IPS – COLOMBIA: Killings of Indians Continued During UN Rapporteur’s Visit – 29 July 2009
The New York Times – Wider Drug War Threatens Colombian Indians – 21 April 2009
The Los Angeles Times – Colombia is asked to probe slayings of Indians in Narino state – 11 February 2009