Hiding the Children: Strategic Concealment of Child Soldiers in Colombia’s Paramilitary Demobilization

Question and contribution.

How many child soldiers disappeared from the official accounting of Colombia's paramilitary demobilization? Comparing commander-run ceremony records with deserters from the same war, the paper estimates that about 96 percent of the children expected in the collective process are absent from its age-bearing records. Adjacent state registries explain at most a quarter of the gap. The analysis measures absence from official accounting, not each child's individual fate.

Abstract.

Transitional justice conditions demobilization benefits on disclosure by the very parties the law threatens. We document strategic concealment of child soldiers in Colombia's 2003 to 2006 collective paramilitary (AUC) demobilization. In the state's age-bearing reintegration records, minors are 0.46 percent of 27,983 fighters at commander-run ceremonies, against 13.7 percent of 6,990 deserters from the same war. The collapse sits at the legal threshold of 18. Deserter-based counterfactuals imply 3,265 to 4,386 missing children, roughly 3,700 to 4,950 across the official wave: about 96 percent of those expected. Children visible in adjacent state registries account for at most a quarter of those expected. No bunching appears at 18-19. The deficit extends above the threshold, consistent with screening on recruitment age, where liability attaches. The UN-monitored 2017 FARC demobilization, run under a minor-separation protocol, cuts cleanly at 18 with no deficit above it. We measure the children's disappearance from the demobilization's official accounting, not each child's fate.

How the project is framed.

BibTeX.

@unpublished{apariciohiding,
  title = {Hiding the Children: Strategic Concealment of Child Soldiers in Colombia’s Paramilitary Demobilization},
  author = {Juan P. Aparicio},
  note = {Working paper},
  url = {/assets/docs/Aparicio_Hiding_the_Children.pdf}
}