Girls, boys and adolescents (NNA) from the municipality of Río Iró, in the department of Chocó, are at imminent risk of being victims of forced recruitment. This was established in the Early Warning of Imminence 020 of 2023 issued by the Ombudsman’s Office, based on the follow-up that it does to the situation of public order and other problems derived from the conflict, whose actions and expansion that the ELN advances and possible confrontations against the Gaitanista Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AGC-Clan del Golfo) have the population in anxiety.
“In the Early Warning recommendations, we have asked the National Government to implement actions to prevent recruitment. We also call on you to protect the life and integrity of absolutely all the inhabitants of this town, in the urban area and in its rural area,” said the Ombudsman, Carlos Camargo Assis.
The Early Warning document, which was delivered to the Ministry of the Interior, specifies that within the purpose of consolidation in the territory, in recent weeks the ELN has intensified the recruitment and illegal use of minors in the municipal capital and in all the corregimientos of Río Iró.
The Ombudsman’s Office evidenced several facts that put children and adolescents at risk of recruitment. On April 19, 2023, the ELN recruited three adolescents, two aged 15 and one aged 14, who belong to the communities of Santa Rita de Iró, Duabe and Buey; they are students of the Jesús Antonio Rivas Educational Institution. In another case that occurred on May 19 of this year, the community prevented the recruitment of a teenager.
“We ask that a prevention and dissemination plan be put into operation immediately in educational institutions that allows girls, boys and adolescents to be guaranteed full information so that, for no reason, they enter illegal armed groups,” said the president. Ombudsman.
For the Ombudsman’s Office, it is very likely that there is an underreporting of cases related to forced recruitment, due to the population’s fear of denouncing and reprisals from illegal armed groups, as well as the distrust they have towards local authorities.
Early Warning 020 also reports on the incursions of the AGC in territories where the ELN exercises territorial control, actions that could trigger armed confrontations.