FARC (Colombia)

Rebel group name

Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia- People’s Party (FARC-EP)

Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Columbia – Ejercito del Pueblo

Background Information

Formed in 1964, FARC evolved out of the Columbian Communist Party with the purpose of replacing the democratic Columbian government with a Communist one. They even received funding from the USSR during the Cold War to help them with their efforts. However as of late, they have strayed away from their pronounced Marxism ideology losing sight of their original purpose. [1]The command structure within FARC is a vertical, centralized structure with the policies and actions determined by the top commanders, not among individual units.[2]

In 1996 FARC officially set their minimum recruitment age of 15.²

Funding

Originally, FARC gained their funding from methods including extortion, bank robbing, and random kidnappings, but only survived because of the support of rural peasants and their international ideological partners of Russia and China.[3]³ In the late 1970s, coca became a major Columbian export and FARC quickly took advantage of the shift. Now their success is based on their ability to take coca profits into funding used for community reinvestment programs, military buildup on a large scale, and buying political support in the area. FARC also gathers revenue from kidnapping, extortion, and hijacking, though to a lesser extent.¹

Estimated number of child soldiers held by rebels

In 2003 there was documented as many of 7,400 children serving within FARC, making up approximately ¼ of the force.²

Temporal scope

In the 1990’s there was a shift in the recruiting pool from university students, adult trade unionists, farmers and the unemployed to children.²

Age

There have been reports given by escaped child soldiers that there has been recruitment starting as young as 8 years of age.[4]

Recruitment method

Most of their recruitment is voluntary but there have been sporadic reports by the Columbian press of forcible recruitment in certain municipalities.[5] In 2002 there was a mandate by the group that all children over 12 in Cunday (Tomila) would have to join the ranks.[6]However, there are many accounts that suggest recruitment is a result of a lack of alternatives for the children, with push factors including abuse from within the family, lack of care, need of employment, etc. and pull factors including money paid to child or family– one report said that families were paid 600USD for their children[7]- or just yearning for adventure. Overall, most join as a product of rural poverty with the belief that they are bettering their situation.[8]

DDR (disarmament, demobilization, reintegration) program

In 1999 the Columbian Family Welfare Institute (ICBF – Instituto Colombiano de Bienestar Familiar) established a program for the reintegration for captured or escaped child soldiers; consisting of three stages, this program had the ultimate goal of taking in captured rebel group child soldiers after their designated 36 hour interrogation period with the military, and assimilating them back into society.[9]A year later a Reinsertion Program ran by the Ministry of the Interior was started with the aim of returning the former-child soldiers to their families, or surrogates.[10] There has been no UN involvement in the programs at this time, beyond monitoring of the facilities.

Other human rights violations

FARC is responsible for a number of civilian killings and summary executions. As part of their training, the children enlisteed are forced to take part in the executions or mutilations of captured enemy soldiers, or deserters. The most common uses of child soldiers include, but unfortunately not limited to, combatants, kidnappers, guards for hostages, human shields, messengers, spies, sexual partners, and ‘mules’ to transport arms and place bombs.

Sexual Violence: Operating under a ‘sexual freedom’ policy, girls as young as 12 are often pressured into relations with older commanders and are fitted with intra-uterine devices or forced to have contraceptive injections.⁹The girls will strive to have relations with a high ranking officer so that they may receive benefits and protection. There have also been cases of girls forced to have sexual relations with government soldiers in order to get information.⁹ Of the estimated 2,500 girl soldiers that experience rape or sexual abuse the majority are within FARC. ⁵

Government’s human rights violations

In the 1980s, paramilitary forces formed to combat the guerrilla forces using the rationale “guerrillas can act outside the law…we realized that we could use the same tactics…and adopt their methods of combat”(p. 19)⁵ the founder of the contemporary paramilitary alliance, Carlos Castano, told Human Rights watch in 1996. This approach has led to paramilitaries backed by the government committing the same infractions of human rights as the rebel groups.⁸ There are ties between paramilitaries and units within the military in which there is complicity in massacres, political killings, ‘disappearances’, kidnappings, and torture.[11] Within the military there have been reported cases of members using captured child soldiers to find and deactivate landmines, act as informants or guides and detaining them for military interrogation beyond the legal 36 hour period.[12] Individual cases have been noted of children being paid or threatened for information and receiving payment for every guerilla that they killed.¹¹ Despite the numerous regulations regarding child soldiers which stipulate their appropriate treatment, because of the numerous contradictions within them they are mostly a symbolic gesture. More directly, there have been numerous reports on civilians killed by the military who are labeled as combatants post-mortem, so that they may be reported as killed in action.

Other relevant information

· FARC’s General Secretariat Raul Reyes pledged to the Special Representative of UN Secretariat-General for Children and Armed Conflict not to recruit those under the age of 15 in 1999.¹¹

· Government Involvement:

§ FARC has participated in peace talks with the government, one round which collapsed in 2002[13] and has officially resumed them as of October 2012⁷

§ ‘Plan Columbia’, a six year plan was launched by the government that made it harder to convict violators of human rights , which may lead to an increase in human rights violations¹¹

§ In 2007 the government signed on to the Paris Commitments which stipulate the ‘unlawful recruitment or use by armed forces of children.¹²

§ Constitutional amendments by the Santos administration with regards to transitional and military justice systems threaten to allow those who have committed crimes to escape based on technicalities. For instance, if there is someone ‘more responsible’ of the crime, then they can escape prosecution, and allows Congress to pardon entire cases and suspend sentences.[14]

References/Citations

Cook, Thomas R.. 2011. The Financial Arm Of The FARC: A Threat Finance Perspective. Journal

of Strategic Security, 4 (1): 19-36.

Human Rights Watch. (2003). “You'll learn not to cry : Child combatants in Columbia.”

Retrieved from: http://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/colombia0903/

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)

(2001). Child soldiers global report 2001. Retrieved from:

http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/country,,CSCOAL,,COL,,498806061e,0.html

(2004). Child soldiers global report 2004. Retrieved from:

http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/country,,CSCOAL,,COL,,49880669c,0.html

(2008). Child soldiers global report 2008. Retrieved from:

http://www.childsoldiersglobalreport.org/content/colombia