When the world gets closer.

We help you see farther.

Sign up to our expressly international daily newsletter.

EL ESPECTADOR

Colombia, No Country For Children

An attack on a guerilla camp killed several minors earlier this year. It was an 'accident,' say authorities, but it says a lot about the country's dismal child welfare record.

Children in Cartagena, Colombia
Children in Cartagena, Colombia
Héctor Abad Faciolince

-OpEd-

BOGOTÁ — Childhood isn't just a matter of being under a certain age. If minors are legal subjects with special protections, it is precisely because a state that is both serious and beneficial seeks to offer them the effective — and affective — opportunity to be children. Except in Colombia, this isn't the case.

Here, children are prevented from having a proper childhood. This happens through child labor, domestic violence, abandonment, begging, deficient schools and sexual harassment. Add to that the prospect of being bombed, mutilated and killed from the air — as happened when army planes bombed a guerrilla base in August — without regard for the fact that they may find themselves in a spot unwillingly.

Girls are deceived and abused. Boys are coerced. This especially happens in marginal neighborhoods, where criminal gangs actively recruit children. They train kids to be killers and convince them that as minors, the punishments — assuming they're ever caught — will be light. Sexual tourism exploits them in other ways: Teenagers, male virgins and even children under the age of puberty are offered to pedophiles.

If there are eight children in a camp of 15 guerrillas, well, bad luck.

You just have to move about a bit to see where it is done: Children are sold here, rented out there. And deep in the countryside, where the state's hand is weaker even than in the cities (if not entirely absent) and where precarious and battered family ties are broken, drug-trafficking gangs or still active guerrillas recruit children using threats, blackmail or deception.

Our leaders, the country's tough-talking, merciless right, think force and fury are the solutions. If there are eight children in a camp of 15 guerrillas, well, bad luck. They shouldn't have been there. They shouldn't have let themselves be recruited. That's the mentality, even if the powers that be primarily blame the people who recruited those children.

They're right about that, but at the same time, they ignore the secondary culprits: the people who bombed the camp indiscriminately. The people, in other words, who actually killed those children.

Children in a clean-up session in Cartagena — Photo: Enzo Tomasiello/SOPA Images via ZUMA Wire

Supposedly they didn't know that the camp in question, the hideout for the FARC dissident chief Gildardo Cucho, consisted mostly of little girls and teenagers. Should we really believe that? And while the order given clearly wasn't to "go kill those children," it may well have been: "Go kill "Old man" Gildardo and if there are children around him, well, so be it."

Out of desperation, we have accepted that the army also fights guerrillas, drug traffickers and other Colombians.

At the end of August, the government defined the operation that terminated Gildardo's life as "impeccable and meticulous." For months it hid information that a part of this guerrilla cell (at least eight of 15 members) were mostly minors. They never revealed how the public prosecutor had previously denounced forced recruitment and possible kidnappings of teenagers in the (San Vicente de Caguán) area, which likely entailed sexual exploitation as the girls were forced to take birth control pills.

It's alright, apparently, to kill a few children, just as long as we get that old reprobate! Generally, countries under civilian rule do not use the army to fight their own citizens. Armies exist to face an invading army or outside enemies. In the case of a war, bombings against that enemy are accepted. But here, out of desperation, we have accepted that the army also fights guerrillas, drug traffickers and other Colombians.

To do so, we give the military the biggest chunk of the national budget. And we even agree that its members can retire at the age of 40, while the rest of us pay the pensions for their next 40 years.

Is it time to rethink all this? Should we not spend more money on education and human resources. Should we not do more to protect our children? We are not giving poorer Colombians a shot at a real childhood, because children subjected to so much abuse, violence and injustice, cannot really be children.

Instead we turn them into little monsters who are overwhelmed by fear and terror. The end up being cornered beasts unable to judge, ready to do anything. They'll even kill, just so they won't be killed.

You've reached your limit of free articles.

To read the full story, start your free trial today.

Get unlimited access. Cancel anytime.

Exclusive coverage from the world's top sources, in English for the first time.

Insights from the widest range of perspectives, languages and countries.

Society

What's Spoiling The Kids: The Big Tech v. Bad Parenting Debate

Without an extended family network, modern parents have sought to raise happy kids in a "hostile" world. It's a tall order, when youngsters absorb the fears (and devices) around them like a sponge.

Image of a kid wearing a blue striped sweater, using an ipad.

Children exposed to technology at a very young age are prominent today.

Julián de Zubiría Samper

-Analysis-

BOGOTÁ — A 2021 report from the United States (the Youth Risk Behavior Survey) found that 42% of the country's high-school students persistently felt sad and 22% had thought about suicide. In other words, almost half of the country's young people are living in despair and a fifth of them have thought about killing themselves.

Such chilling figures are unprecedented in history. Many have suggested that this might be the result of the COVID-19 pandemic, but sadly, we can see depression has deeper causes, and the pandemic merely illustrated its complexity.

I have written before on possible links between severe depression and the time young people spend on social media. But this is just one aspect of the problem. Today, young people suffer frequent and intense emotional crises, and not just for all the hours spent staring at a screen. Another, possibly more important cause may lie in changes to the family composition and authority patterns at home.

Firstly: Families today have fewer members, who communicate less among themselves.

Young people marry at a later age, have fewer children and many opt for personal projects and pets instead of having children. Families are more diverse and flexible. In many countries, the number of children per woman is close to or less than one (Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong among others).

In Colombia, women have on average 1.9 children, compared to 7.6 in 1970. Worldwide, women aged 15 to 49 years have on average 2.4 children, or half the average figure for 1970. The changes are much more pronounced in cities and among middle and upper-income groups.

Of further concern today is the decline in communication time at home, notably between parents and children. This is difficult to quantify, but reasons may include fewer household members, pervasive use of screens, mothers going to work, microwave ovens that have eliminated family cooking and meals and, thanks to new technologies, an increase in time spent on work, even at home. Our society is addicted to work and devotes little time to minors.

Keep reading...Show less

You've reached your limit of free articles.

To read the full story, start your free trial today.

Get unlimited access. Cancel anytime.

Exclusive coverage from the world's top sources, in English for the first time.

Insights from the widest range of perspectives, languages and countries.

The latest