On April 20, the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) – Colombia’s transitional justice mechanism – released a report on the impacts suffered by animals in the context of the armed conflict. 

The JEP’s report, conducted in partnership with the University of Essex, found that an animal is killed or injured every 30 minutes due to the armed conflict.

Animal rights activists say the release represents a step forward in publicizing the often invisibilized violence inflicted upon animals in war.

The report was developed through the construction of a database using 237 national, regional, and local media outlets, and 600 X accounts belonging to social and environmental organizations, as well as State entities and multilateral organizations.

Based on the information collected, they made an individual categorization referring to domestic animals, and a collective one referring to species, that is, wild animals. In this context, 100,252 domestic animals faced violence and 44 species are at imminent risk of extinction as a result of the armed conflict.

Thirty-two percent of the recorded cases involving animals were directly linked to military actions, including armed confrontations, ambushes, and attacks. The impacts were not distributed evenly across the territory; there are regions where armed conflict, illegal economies, and environmental richness converge, intensifying the harm. For example, Antioquia is the department with the highest concentration of species threatened by the conflict.

“We realized that most cases involved incidents such as accidents with landmines, anti-personnel mines, ambushes against the public security forces, harassment of the public security forces, and armed confrontations. These were some of the situations in which animals were killed or injured. They were also affected by forced displacement,” Laura Ojeda, a researcher on the JEP’s Investigation and Prosecution Unit who contributed to the report, explained. 

Forced abandonment was one of the most documented forms of harm identified in the report, largely because it was closely tied to the victimization of caregivers within the dynamics of the conflict. 27% of the recorded cases — corresponding to approximately 900,000 animals — involved forced abandonment.

The report also identified nine ways in which animals were used throughout the armed conflict: as means of transportation; as devices to detonate explosive artifacts; as instruments to inflict pain and suffering – torture –; as sentinels for rapid alerts; as surveillance tools; in practices of bioterrorism involving zoonotic diseases; as propaganda tools; as amulets or part of esoteric rituals; and as a means to intimidate communities and extort payments from business owners and farmers.

Visibilizing animal suffering

The report comes as part of the JEP’s efforts to recognize the environment within its processes of justice, truth, and reparation. This release, the third in a series of three, is the first to focus on the specific forms of violence suffered by animals. 

“It is part of a strategy to recognize all forms of life that have been victims of the armed conflict in Colombia,” Ojeda told The Bogotá Post.

For Senator Andrea Padilla of the Green Alliance (Alianza Verde) party, the report represents a major step forward for animal rights. 

She notes that harm to animals is usually addressed as a collateral issue, as damage to property under a framework of harm to human assets.

“Animals have always been excluded from any moral consideration, from any legal consideration, even from news coverage,” the senator told The Bogotá Post.

The team behind the report faced the challenge of shifting the narrative away from the legal framework which refers to animals only as part of the natural environment.

Instead, it adopted a “differential” approach from natural sciences, in collaboration with La Enredadera & co, a scientific outreach collective.

For Luis Carlos Posso, anthropologist and member of the collective, the report represents an exception to the “unavoidable anthropocentrism permeating the law.”

Senator Padilla highlighted the animal rights implications:  “I believe it is only fair that sentient beings capable of emotions, affection, and social, moral, and emotional lives are also considered as affected by the conflict.”

Padilla added that understanding the impact of the conflict on animals deepens the appreciation of the human toll of violence.

“When we understand that there are bonds of affection there, family bonds that are abruptly broken by war, we can also see the conflict in a deeper way — that is, we can understand the deepest forms of harm being caused,” said the senator.

Animals as victims of the armed conflict

In addition to detailing the harms inflicted upon animals, the report proposes various reparative measures. These include habitat restoration, veterinary care in conflict zones, public veterinary care networks, the inclusion of animals in memory and truth processes, protection measures for at-risk species, and conservation initiatives.

However, there is still a long way to go before animals can be fully recognized as victims.

“Legally they are not things, but they are also not rights-holders. If they are not rights-holders, they cannot be recognized as victims,” explains Ojeda.

Colombian law recognizes animals as sentient beings, and laws such as the Ángel Law reflect significant progress in their rights. Currently, there is a bill advancing in congress that seeks to historically and legally recognize animals and ecosystems as victims of the internal armed conflict, prohibiting their use as instruments of war and ordering their essential reparation. This is Bill No. 012 of 2025, led by Senator Esmeralda Hernández of the Pacto Histórico party.

Senator Padilla explained that the success of the legal changes will depend on whoever is elected as the next president. 

“Undoubtedly, this report holds great value. It not only offers another perspective on the armed conflict, but also explicitly incorporates animals into the analysis of war, harm, and peace,” said Senator Padilla. She added that animals must be involved in reparations processes, insisting, “peace must include animals, or it will not be complete.”

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Colombia’s transitional justice mechanism, the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), announced yesterday that it had revised the official number of “false positive” killings – deaths illegitimately presented as combat casualties – from 6,402 to 7,837.

The announcement came as part of the JEP’s Macro Case 03, which is investigating extrajudicial executions between 1990 and 2016.

The country’s Truth Commission had previously established 6,402 cases of “false positive” killings but the JEP’s latest figures suggest the scale of one of the country’s largest scandals was greater than previously thought. 

The information was provided by Pedro Elías Díaz on April 24, Magistrate of the Legal Situations Definition Chamber, during a hearing related to a massacre of leaders and children in San José de Apartadó, Antioquia. Díaz first revealed that 1,932 people had been killed in the department between 1990 and 2016, before disclosing the new national figure.

“The report also highlighted statistics on homicides and forced disappearances allegedly attributed to the public force between 1990 and 2016 nationwide, classified as illegitimate killings presented as combat deaths, amounting to 7,837 victims—a figure that remains dynamic as cases progress,” said Díaz. 

The magistrate affirmed that in addition to the forensic identification of victims, the latest figures were based on victims’ reports submitted to the JEP since 2018 and documents from the National Center for Historical Memory, the Office of the Inspector General, and the Office of the Attorney General.

JEP President Alejandro Ramelli Arteaga later confirmed the revised figures and said that the period during which the “false positives” occurred was extended, from 2002 to 2008, to 1990 to 2016. 

Ramelli added that the number is likely to increase as investigations continue: “They have been holding territorial hearings with those most responsible, who are also confessing to cases of executions and disappearances that had never been investigated. It is most likely that this new figure will continue to increase in the future.”

The “false positives”, many of which occurred during the administration of ex-President Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010) are highly politicized.

President Gustavo Petro responded to the news with thinly veiled criticism of Uribe, whose Democratic Center (CD) party won the second highest number of seats in recent congressional elections. 

“There are 7,837 victims of the state due to the systematic execution of young people under the government of the so-called “Democratic Security” policy — in reality, a policy of total death… They do not want reelection for social justice; they want it for death,” wrote Petro on X.  

Paloma Valencia, the CD’s presidential candidate, has pledged an iron-fisted approach to armed groups similar to that of her political mentor, Uribe, who continues to lead the party. 

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Former Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) commanders have for the first time in Colombian history freely admitted the armed group’s role in recruiting more than 18,677 children during five decades of their armed conflict with the state.

In a five-page document signed by Rodrigo Londoño, alias ‘Timochenko’, and five other demobilized senior leaders, the former fighters recognized their role in forcing minors into a life under arms.

Colombia’s peace court, known as the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), had previously determined that the six defendants, all former members of the FARC secretariat, carried responsibility for the crimes of recruitment of minors under 15 years of age, mistreatment torture and murder of children, sexual and reproductive violence, and prejudice against minors with diverse sexual orientations or gender identities.

See also: Peace plan has caused more conflict, says thinktank.

In the letter to the court the six defendants admitted the acts and asked for forgiveness.

“There are no words to repair these deeds,” said Londoño in a televised address widely circulated this week. “Today with honesty and clarity we recognize our role.”

“We ask forgiveness from direct and indirect victims, and from society in general.”

Londoño, who was the FARC’s last field commander up until the peace signing, said he recognized that the rebel’s actions had “stolen childhoods” as young combatants faced constant fear and death.

Historical whitewashing

Londoño also acknowledged that “the homicides, forced abortions, acts of gender-based violence, and reproductive violence caused serious physical and psychological damage that still persists”.

The statement was a milestone in Case 07 of Colombia’s JEP, the special court charged with untangling crimes committed by all sides during the state conflict with the FARC.

Case 07 was opened in 2019 and has since officially recognized 18,677 victims, of which 54 per cent are children themselves recruited, and 46 per cent families who lost children to the conflict.

Other actors in Colombia’s armed conflict have used minors as well. According to Crisis Group, “right-wing paramilitary groups” counted some 2,800 children within their ranks when they demobilized in the mid-2000s.

Historically the FARC whitewashed their role in the recruitment of minors, and during the 2016 peace process vigorously denied accusations of abducting children or threatening families to hand over their children.

According to the FARC’s own narrative, many young recruits joining the Marxist guerrilla group were “volunteers escaping poverty”. The leadership traditionally downplayed reports of sexual abuse, forced abortions and the murders and disappearances of children as political propaganda.

As recently as 2015, FARC commanders were claiming that the armed group “under no circumstance recruited children, or anyone else, forcefully,” according to a Human Rights Watch report critical of the guerrilla’s position.

Never coming home

HRW’s own investigations had identified victims as young as 12 who were tied up by the guerrillas and threatened to be killed if they tried to resist. In other cases, kids were tricked with offers of presents or cash before being forced to fight under arms.

The report also cited cases of older commanders abusing girls as young as 12 in some incidents forcing them to use contraception or to have abortions.

According to JEP data presented under Case 07, child victims were present in the FARC ranks across 16 departments of Colombia, almost the whole territory controlled by the guerrilla group at its peak. Recruitment peaked between 1999 and 2013 but continued to 2016, the year of the peace accord between the rebels and the state.

Accredited to the case were 2,000 individual victims recruited as children but now adults, the JEP announced this week.

Also part of the group were families of 485 children recruited into the ranks who “never returned home”. The JEP had joined with the UPBD (Unidad de Búsqueda de Personas dadas por Desaparecidas) missing persons unit to try and locate the remains of those missing persons.

Details from Case 07 also highlighted the large numbers of minors taken from indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities, with 9,000 registered victims from six ethnic groups.

Restorative Justice

According to JEP proceedures, FARC leaders’ statements this week were an important step forward in the restorative justice process. The special peace court works with a system of dialogues between accused perpetrators and victims.

Information released by the court this week defined Case 07 as still in the dialogue phase with both private and public audiences were expected in the future where victims would given the opportunity to recount their experiences.

In line with previous cases, the former FARC leaders, could chose to respond to the crimes in front of the victims. Any punishment could come in the form of an eight-year sentence of restricted liberties for the former FARC leaders, though not jail time.

As part of the sentence the JEP might recommend restorative programs – a form of social work – in agreements made with the victims.   

For its part, the former FARC secretariat announced its full support for this process. In a taped statement former commander Julián Galló also accepted his role in the crimes.

“Our compromise is to work in the future so that hopefully these cases don’t keep on occurring,” he said.

Circular problem

Repetition was already happening, according to a report published last month by Crisis Group called Kids on the Front Lines: Stopping Child Recruitment in Colombia. According to the Brussels-based think tank, the practice had “boomed in the last decade” even since the FARC demobilized under the peace process in 2016.

A new generation of armed groups still relied on minors to maintain territorial control, said the report, with 620 cases reported in 2024: “Children carry out high-risk tasks, suffer abuse, and are punished with death if caught escaping.”

Ruthless gangs were using social media posts to reel vulnerable youngsters into the conflict with false promises of wealth, status and protection, said Crisis Group. Families faced reprisals if they spoke out, the report added.

And with increased competition between fractionated armed groups, minors were being pushed to the front lines: “Kids now fight in high-risk combat roles.”

Colombia’s circular problem of child recruitment was highlighted this week by JEP magistrate Lily Rueda, presiding over Case 07, in conversation with El Espectador. The message from the peace courts was “more relevant then ever” after data from UNICEF showed that the recruitment of children in Colombia had increased by 300% in the last five years.

“This is an opportunity to reiterate our commitment to investigating and prosecuting these acts of violence against children, which constitute war crimes and are not subject to amnesty, not even in the context of peace agreements,” she said

“Victims who survived recruitment in the past should not be victimized again by the recruitment of their own sons and daughters in the present day.”

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