In Colombia, children are not safe in school. Since 2017, there has been, on average, an attack on a school environment every four days. The figure, compiled by Transitional Justice and the highest across Latin America, warns of how children and adolescents are being forced to educate themselves amid threats, shootings and the inherent dangers of recruitment. All of this is happening in one in four municipalities in a country that signed the Safe Schools Declaration in 2022, a global political commitment to protect children and their school environments from armed conflict.
The recent killing of at least seven minors in a bombing against dissident members of the now-defunct Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia in Guaviare has once again highlighted the vulnerability of minors in Colombia, illustrating, especially in rural areas, the inability of the state to guarantee their right to education by protecting their educational places. A video compiled by the Norwegian Refugee Council (CNR) showing several children in school uniforms sitting in a row, their heavy breathing mixing with the background wind noise, shows that forced conscription is just one aspect of the situation and that, as the study identified, it is a practice closely linked to violence in educational settings.
What is shown in the images, which took place in the northeast of the country, is being repeated across Colombia, and is one of more than 50 violent incidents recorded by CRN this year, as the humanitarian organization records a 65% increase in the number of victims compared to the same period in 2024. This figure places Colombia in fourth place in the global rankings and first in the Western Hemisphere, with 363 attacks between 2022 and 2023, surpassed only by Palestine. (1055), Ukraine (745) and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (448). One in four municipalities in the country has suffered an accident of this type.
However, attacks on education go beyond overt gun violence; NGOs have identified that criminal structures also seek to use classrooms and classrooms to influence the population. “Many non-state armed groups undertake the tasks of providing public goods, especially in the educational field (…) These practices are not limited to infrastructure: they also include imposing pedagogical content and curricular guidelines for the purposes of indoctrination,” explains a report by the Risk Monitoring Mechanism of the Special Judiciary for Peace, the court agreed upon by the state and the FARC in 2016 to close the most serious cases for the most serious crimes. Representatives of armed conflict.
According to what researchers gathered, teachers have become a target for criminals, as in many areas they assume local social leadership. This importance seems uncomfortable for criminal structures seeking social control. According to the document, Colombia is the second country that recorded the largest number of crimes against teachers, with the number of attacks reaching 388 since the signing of the peace agreement eight years ago. The main forms of aggression are death threats and selective killings, turning teaching into a risky profession.
Insufficient efforts
On paper, the Colombian state has adopted several measures to avoid this violence. Implementation of the Safe Schools Declaration, headed by the State Department, has progressed at a slow pace, among other things, due to constant changes in officials.
Daniel Vega Pinzón, official in the Department of Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law at the State Department, defends the progress made. “The announcement sends a shock in terms of institutional reactivation. During 2023, an action plan was drawn up, and although it was difficult to articulate at first, we took the initiative at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Since May, we have consolidated the monitoring schedule, and there are already five thematic schedules working with several ministries,” he explains. It highlights key steps, such as incorporating the measures in the declaration into some MoD guidelines.
But this is not enough at all, according to specialized organizations. “There are at least 1,500 institutions at high risk. Little by little we have been able to focus on those in 12 municipalities, but this is insufficient given the growth of illegal armed groups and attacks,” explains Felipe Cortes, advocacy director at the NGO Save the Children. This NGO has asked the government to build a national monitoring methodology and allocate resources to prevent and respond to attacks. In parallel, they stress the need to consider other angles: reform and reconstruction. Likewise, Curtis points out the need to break impunity. “Together with other actors, we are participating in a legislative initiative to create a criminal offense related to attacks on schools which will allow for a more precise and detailed investigation,” he emphasizes.