Attachments
HIGHLIGHTS
- In Colombia, children and adolescents face multiple crises: escalating armed conflict and other violence, challenges posed by refugee and migration flows, disease outbreaks and the effects of climate change and climate variability, such as the La Niña and El Niño weather patterns. All these contribute to food insecurity and protection crises, and because of these conditions, in 2025 an estimated 13.4 million people, including 4.2 million children and 4.5 million refugees and migrants, will require humanitarian assistance.
- UNICEF, alongside the Government and partners, will deliver life-saving assistance while integrating resilience-building into all programmes. This approach addresses immediate needs while ensuring sustainable interventions for children are connected through the humanitarian–development–peace nexus. UNICEF will implement gender-responsive, inclusive and integrated multisectoral programmes that prioritize the participation of children and adolescents, focusing on areas with the most urgent needs.
- UNICEF requires $97.1 million in 2025 to meet the needs of vulnerable children and families affected by multiple crises, particularly those impacted by armed conflict, migration and natural disasters.
HUMANITARIAN SITUATION AND NEEDS
Children in Colombia face multiple crises, including armed conflict, displacement, genderbased violence, disease outbreaks, migration challenges, malnutrition6 and the impacts of climate change. In 2025, an estimated 13.4 million people, including more 4.2 million children, will require humanitarian assistance.
Armed conflict continues to devastate the lives of 9.7 million people in Colombia, with children often bearing the most severe consequences.7 The situation has worsened with rising displacement, child recruitment into armed groups, gender based-violence,8 landmine and unexploded ordnance accidents, attacks on schools and movement restrictions.
In the first half of 2024, more than 183,400 people were confined or displaced due to clashes between armed non-state actors.9 Armed non-state actors and criminal organizations are reported to be present in more than 40 per cent of the country. 10 The Ombudsman's Office has raised concerns about the expansion and consolidation of non-state armed groups in Colombia.11 As of October 2024, the Ombudsman's Office of Colombia had issued 323 early warnings have been issued, with 83 per cent related to the imminent risk of child recruitment by these groups – a phenomenon on the rise since 2021 and one that testifies to the territorial control exerted by these groups.12 Moreover, attacks on schools jumped from 107 in early 2023 to 125 in 2024.13 The suspension of the dialogue between the Government and armed non-state actors has resulted in an escalation in violence, child recruitment, incidents involving improvised explosive devices and attacks on schools.14 Beyond these human-caused threats, in 2023, natural disasters displaced 351,000 people.15
Refugee and migrant children face escalating crises, including violence, family separation and a lack of access to protective services. As the country hosting the highest number of Venezuelan migrants in the region, with more 2.8 million as of January 2024,16 Colombia’s migrant and refugee population faces critical humanitarian needs. Children among these populations require immediate action, including a stronger protective environment to prevent violence and family separation. Unaccompanied and separated children require enhanced protective mechanisms, the establishment of effective monitoring systems and support for regularization and documentation processes.
Moreover, refugee and migrant children require improved access to early childhood development, to services for prevention and response to gender-based violence,17 secondary education, menstrual health18and essential health and nutrition services. Among refugee and migrant populations, 15 per cent of pregnant women and 41 per cent of children under age 5 lack critical services. Nineteen per cent of surveyed households rely on unsafe water sources; this includes 14 per cent of the most vulnerable refugee and migrant households.19