‘Never touched a gun’: Colombia fighters step up child soldier recruitment

The last time Marta saw her 14-year-old son was three months ago – he was wearing rebel army fatigues and holding a rifle as he marched down the street with the other child soldiers.

She ran to the commanding officer and begged him to release her boy, who had been abducted nine months earlier in the middle of the night from their home in eastern Colombia at age 13. The officer, part of a dissident group of the now-demobilised Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, waved her away, threatening to shoot her if she didn’t leave.

Al Jazeera’s Teresa Bo reports from Cauca, Colombia.

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Post from Al Jazeera on November 19, 2025

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