Colombia’s military will suspend the bombing of guerrilla camps where minors could be present, Defense Minister Ivan Velasquez announced Thursday.
The partial suspension seeks to prevent the killing of victims of illegal armed groups’ forced recruitment of minors, Velasquez said in a press conference.
The defense minister said he didn’t want to repeat “past actions that were very painful” in an apparent reference to the killing of minors in bombings carried out under former President Ivan Duque.
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Velasquez stressed that “minors who were forcibly recruited by illegal organizations are victims. They are victims of that violence we have lived for so many decades.”
Defense Minister Ivan Velasquez
The defense minister stressed that future military operations that include aerial bombardments will be scrutinized before approval to guarantee compliance with international humanitarian law, which obligates security forces to prevent the killing of civilians.
Duque presented bombed minors and children as ‘narco-terrorist criminals’
Mixed reactions
Human rights defenders celebrated the military’s revised policy while conservative and far-right pundits rejected Velasquez’ announcement.
One of the executives of the far-right Democratic Center party, Rafael Nieto, said on Twitter that the measures to prevent the killing of children “stimulates the recruitment of minors to use them as human shields” and “protects criminal groups.”
Senator Ivan Cepeda of President Gustavo Petro’s Historic Pact party, responded that pundits like Nieto “implicitly state that it’s preferable to continue killing” victim of forced recruitment.
Child recruitment in Colombia continues to be “widespread and systematic”
The problem of child soldiers
Particularly guerrilla groups that fight the security forces have long allowed minors to enter their ranks, which is a war crimes if the recruits are 15 years or younger.
The FARC, which demobilized and disarmed in 2017, forcibly recruited almost 19,000 children between 1996 and 2016, according to war crimes tribunal JEP.
The forced recruitment of children by illegal armed groups continued to be “widespread and systematic” after the demobilization of the FARC, a report by non-government organization Oxfam said in 2020.
Child welfare agency ICBF said last year that its offices received 465 minor victims of forced recruitment since the beginning of the FARC peace process in November 2016.