Colombia’s New Gov’t Inherits Human Rights Crisis With 651 Massacres, 1,500 Children Recruited

Colombia is beginning a new presidential term with a human rights landscape marked by the persistence of armed conflict, the recruitment of children and adolescents, forced displacement, massacres, and the killings of people who laid down their weapons after the 2016 Peace Agreement. Two documents recently published, one by Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the other by Colombia’s Ombudsman’s Office, offer an especially troubling snapshot of the situation inherited by the government of Abelardo de la Espriella.

Human Rights Watch estimates, based on data from the Ombudsman’s Office, that approximately 1,500 children and adolescents have been recruited by armed groups since 2021. The organization warns that Colombia still does not have a unified national count of recruitment cases or of how many minors have been rescued or successfully disengaged from armed groups, meaning the available figures do not necessarily reflect the full scale of the problem.

At the same time, the Ombudsman’s Office reported that between 2019 and July 18, 2026, 651 massacres were recorded, leaving 2,380 victims. Its document, ‘Snapshot of Human Rights in Colombia: Key Figures for Decision-Making’, was delivered to the new government as a baseline for identifying the country’s main gaps and risks and helping guide future public policy decisions.

The two assessments reveal a problem that goes beyond any single administration. After decades of conflict and nearly 10 years since the peace agreement with the FARC was signed, large parts of the country remain exposed to armed organizations that have transformed, fragmented, and adapted to new forms of violence. At the same time, the figures raise questions about the ability of security, protection, and peacebuilding policies implemented in recent years to curb that expansion and effectively protect civilians.“Armed groups in Colombia are recruiting children with impunity, protection systems are failing, and social media platforms have become fertile ground for recruitment,” said Juanita Goebertus, Americas director at Human Rights Watch, when presenting the report. She later summarized the seriousness of the situation in even starker terms: “Every child recruited is evidence of the state’s failure.”

A conflict that fragmented but did not disappear

The Ombudsman’s Office says both organized crime and armed conflict persist even as their structures and methods change. There are currently 120 active territorial early warnings, covering 396 municipalities and 15 Indigenous territories across all 32 of Colombia’s departments. These alerts allow the institution to identify situations in which communities or population groups face risks stemming from armed conflict and other forms of violence.

The tools used in the fighting are also changing. Between January and May 2026, the Ombudsman’s Office recorded 121 attacks involving drones, which left 21 people dead and 145 injured. The adoption of this technology shows the ability of armed actors to adapt and expands the risks faced by communities living in territories where different groups compete for territorial control, strategic corridors, and illicit economies.

Collective violence also remains deeply entrenched. The 651 massacres and 2,380 victims recorded between 2019 and July 2026 show the continued occurrence of incidents in which multiple people are killed in a single event. The figure does not mean that all the cases had the same perpetrator or can be attributed to a single government policy, but it does illustrate the persistence of extreme forms of violence across the country.

Forced displacement reveals another dimension of the crisis. Between 2017 and the first part of 2026, the Ombudsman’s Office recorded 1,002 incidents of mass forced displacement affecting 394,839 people. On average, 35.73% of those affected belonged to ethnic communities, evidence that the consequences of the conflict continue to fall disproportionately on certain sectors of the population.

Violence against people who laid down their arms also remains a major obstacle to the implementation of the Peace Agreement. As of May 2026, more than 11,000 signatories remained in the reintegration process, while 521 had been killed between 2017 and 2026, according to the Ombudsman’s Office. Protecting this population is essential not only as a state obligation but also to preserve the credibility of reintegration as a viable alternative to remaining in armed organizations.

The situation of social leaders, human rights defenders, and journalists adds another layer to the crisis in Colombia. The Ombudsman’s Office reported that between 2016 and June 2026, 1,743 human rights defenders and social leaders were killed. The institution also documented 711 attacks against journalists between January 2025 and July 15, 2026, including 275 threats. The figures therefore point to a violence landscape that can no longer be understood solely through the country’s former armed actors. The challenge for the new government will be to confront organizations that are more fragmented and flexible without abandoning civilian protection or reducing the state’s response to military action alone.

One of the most significant findings in the Human Rights Watch report concerns the way armed groups are changing their strategies for attracting minors. The Spanish-language report, which runs 114 pages, is titled “I Thought I’d Never See My Mom Again: Recruitment and Use of Children by Armed Groups in Colombia.” To produce it, HRW conducted 184 interviews with government officials, humanitarian workers, Indigenous and community leaders, family advocates, and organizations focused on human rights and children’s rights. Researchers also met with children who had been recruited or were at risk of recruitment.

The data analyzed by the organization show that the problem has worsened, especially since 2023. According to HRW, FARC dissident groups were responsible for 74% of the cases documented by the Ombudsman’s Office between 2021 and 2025, with the Estado Mayor Central implicated in most of them. Cauca accounts for nearly 57% of all reported cases nationwide. The impact on Indigenous communities is particularly disproportionate. Nearly five out of every 10 cases recorded between 2021 and 2025 involved Indigenous children and adolescents, even though Indigenous peoples make up roughly 4.3% of Colombia’s population. Cauca also accounted for 80% of the cases involving recruited Indigenous minors during that period. The age of the victims is another major concern. More than 30% of reported cases involved children between the ages of 10 and 14. HRW notes that, under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the recruitment of children under age 15 may constitute a war crime.

The Ombudsman’s Office, meanwhile, reported 682 recruitment cases in 2024, 419 in 2025, and 74 between January and June 2026. But it makes an important clarification: a decline in the number of reported cases does not necessarily mean that recruitment itself has fallen. Risks to families, fear, threats, and barriers to reporting can prevent cases from ever reaching the authorities.

Human Rights Watch explains that armed organizations exploit conditions such as poverty, social exclusion, domestic violence, and barriers to education. Minors in particularly vulnerable situations may be offered money, status, or power. The organization also documented the use of civilian intermediaries who can receive up to US$1,000 for every child recruited, as well as cases involving rural schools and boarding facilities.

But one of the most important shifts is happening online. According to information from the Special Jurisdiction for Peace cited by Human Rights Watch, 44% of minors recruited in 2025 were approached through social media. Platforms such as TikTok and Facebook are being used to present an appealing version of armed life, post deceptive job offers, and establish contact through public chats or private messages. HRW reviewed 72 profiles and 41 posts on TikTok and Facebook that glorified armed life and encouraged minors to join. On TikTok specifically, researchers identified 52 accounts and 37 posts promoting recruitment into armed groups. Combined, those accounts had more than 85,000 followers, while some videos surpassed 250,000 views and 50,000 likes.

The videos reviewed showed weapons, uniforms, bundles of cash, training sessions, and other elements designed to portray membership in armed organizations in a favorable light. Some included narcocorridos and other musical genres that romanticized the experience. In one piece of content documented by HRW, an apparently underage girl said she had joined an armed group when she was 13.

On Facebook, researchers identified 20 accounts reaching more than 15,000 followers. Some posts facilitated recruitment by inviting people to make contact privately and even offered to cover transportation costs for those interested in joining. The investigation also raises concerns about the platforms themselves. After viewing content related to armed organizations, the account used by HRW began receiving recommendations for similar material and profiles. The organization says this suggests that recommendation algorithms can direct people who engage with such propaganda toward even more content of the same kind.

The Special Jurisdiction for Peace had already identified 146 TikTok and Facebook accounts linked to suspected child recruitment practices in May 2025. By February 2026, 37 remained active, and 109 had been removed. However, investigators detected what they described as “patterns of digital reconfiguration”: when one account disappears, others can emerge and begin distributing similar content again.

Nearly 4,000 recruitment cases and only 9 convictions

The expansion of child recruitment stands in sharp contrast with the criminal justice system’s response. According to information from the Attorney General’s Office compiled by HRW, between 2016 and 2025 prosecutors opened preliminary inquiries into 3,947 criminal reports involving unlawful recruitment under Article 162 of Colombia’s Criminal Code. Only 45 cases (about 1%) advanced to the formal investigation stage, 25 reached trials, and nine resulted in convictions. In other words, convictions represented roughly 0.2% of the criminal reports initially recorded.

HRW also warns that the few convictions obtained appear to have focused largely on people who directly carried out recruitment rather than those higher up the chain of command. The organization says it found only one ruling over the past decade against individuals accused of ordering recruitment. That 2024 decision convicted leaders of the Estado Mayor Central and the Estado Mayor de Bloques y Frentes over the recruitment of 10 minors, nine of whom were killed during a military bombing in San Vicente del Caguán, Caquetá, on August 29, 2019. The danger does not necessarily end once a child enters an armed group; HRW documents that armed organizations often move minors to other regions to separate them from their families and communities and make escape more difficult. They may then be used for intelligence gathering, drone operations, or direct participation in combat, and additionally, as highlighted by the reports, girls face additional risks of sexual violence.

The Ombudsman’s Office adds another particularly serious figure to the assessment. Between August 2022 and June 2026, 71 children and adolescents were killed during military operations. The institution notes that other minors have also died during clashes between illegal armed groups themselves. For Human Rights Watch, addressing the problem requires a response that goes far beyond increasing the number of troops on the ground. “Stopping the recruitment of children will require far more than soldiers in the field,” Goebertus said. “Children at risk of recruitment need opportunities to study and build a future for themselves.”

That argument captures one of the central challenges posed by both reports to the new government. Security will remain an essential part of the response, but preventing an armed group from reaching a community before the state does will also require education, justice, economic opportunities, effective protection, stronger institutions, and policies capable of responding to new forms of digital recruitment.

The Ombudsman’s Office describes its assessment as a baseline against which the evolution of Colombia’s main human rights challenges can be measured in the years ahead. For Abelardo de la Espriella’s government, the figures therefore represent more than an inherited record from previous administrations; they will also serve as a starting point for measuring whether the country succeeds in reducing child recruitment, massacres, displacement, and conflict-related killings.

Behind the approximately 1,500 recruited minors, the 651 massacres, the 394,839 people affected by mass displacement, and the 521 murdered peace agreement signatories lies the same fundamental question about the Colombian state’s capacity: whether it can restore an effective presence and provide real protection in the territories where armed groups still have the power to shape the daily lives of communities.