Colombian drug traffickers recruit children through social networks to pilot explosive drones: Report
Colombian drug gangs and rebel groups are increasingly recruiting children and training them for dangerous roles, including piloting drones loaded with explosives, Human Rights Watch said in a report released Monday.The human rights watchdog said armed groups were using social media to lure children as they expanded their control over rural areas where they profit from drug trafficking, extortion and illegal mining.“Armed groups in Colombia are recruiting children with impunity,” Juanita Goebertus, Americas director at Human Rights Watch, told the AP news agency, warning that weak protection systems and social media platforms were facilitating recruitment.
It’s going up again
At least 1,500 children have been recruited by armed groups in Colombia since 2021, according to the country’s Office of Human Rights Defenders. Of those cases, 625 were reported in 2024 alone.Recruitment of children had declined after Colombia’s 2016 peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, helped reduce violence in several parts of the country. But recruitment has increased again as smaller rebel factions and criminal organizations have fought to take control of rural territories abandoned by FARC fighters.Historically, armed groups have used children as messengers, cooks and intelligence gatherers, and have sometimes forced them to collaborate with rival groups. Girls have also suffered sexual abuse by commanders.But HRW said the role of recruited children was changing as armed groups increasingly turned to drones equipped with explosives. Drones have been used to attack rival groups, as well as police and military bases.HRW said it had verified videos on social media showing children operating drones loaded with explosives and had interviewed family protection officers who work with children who have escaped or been demobilized from armed groups.Some children who later left the groups said that commanders had presented operating drones as a game and not as participating in armed combat, according to the report.The scale of drone attacks has also increased. Colombia’s Human Rights Ombudsman recorded 121 drone attacks by armed groups in the first five months of this year, killing 21 people and injuring 145.
HRW identified dozens of social media accounts that portrayed life with rebel groups in a positive light, an issue the United Nations has also previously raised.The watchdog said algorithms on platforms such as Meta and TikTok appeared in some cases to promote content that encouraged children to join armed groups.Meta and TikTok told HRW that their platforms prohibit content that promotes violence and said they had removed accounts flagged by the organization.The FARC dissident faction led by Commander Iván Mordisco was involved in most of the child recruitment cases identified by HRW, with particularly intense recruitment reported in the Cauca region of Colombia.The impact has been especially severe on indigenous communities. Almost half of the child recruitment cases recorded by Colombian authorities since 2021 involved indigenous children, even though indigenous people make up only about 4% of the country’s population.
Girls represented 40% of all children recruited.HRW urged the Colombian government to dedicate more resources to prosecute those who recruit children and strengthen protection systems in vulnerable rural areas. It also called on social media companies to make it easier for users to report recruiting content and preserve evidence that could help prosecutors.
