Colombia’s Peace Tribunal indicted for the first time ten commanders of the terrorist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) for recruiting and using minors in their operations.
In addition, the court attributed other crimes against humanity to FARC members, including murders, disappearances, and the use of anti-personnel mines.
The court noted that the FARC used “recruitment as a political-military strategy as an armed organization,” with particular recurrence since the late 1990s.
The majority of those recruited were indigenous or Afro-descendant children in precarious economic situations who were taken to the guerrilla camps under deception or through offers of money.
It is estimated that this terrorist group forcibly recruited some 18,677 minors from its emergence until it decided to initiate a peace process with the Colombian State that concluded in 2016.
Although this group is often considered extinct, some surviving “dissidents” operate openly in some regions of the porous border between Colombia and Venezuela.
With information from LGI