Colombia recorded hundreds of attacks on schools in recent years and ranks first in the Americas and fourth globally for violence against education, according to transitional-justice monitors and humanitarian organizations, a pattern driven by armed-group activity, occupation of school facilities, and forced recruitment that experts say is fundamentally different from the school-shooting phenomenon in the United States.
A study from Colombia’s Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) found 363 attacks on education in Colombia between 2022 and 2023, placing the country behind Palestine (1,055), Ukraine (745), and the Democratic Republic of Congo (448) in that period. JEP said other countries with high counts in the same biennium included Burkina Faso, Myanmar, India, Syria, Afghanistan, and Ethiopia.
Humanitarian monitors on the ground recorded fresh violence in 2025. The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) documented 52 attacks on education in the first half of the year across departments where it operates and reported a 65% rise in the number of victims compared with the same period in 2024. NRC said the incidents in 2025 affected thousands of students, teachers, and school staff and underlined the frequency of explosive incidents, occupations of schools, and crossfire that endangers civilians.
How Colombia’s attacks on schools differs from school shootings in the US
Experts and the monitoring reports make a clear distinction between the conflict-rooted attacks documented in Colombia and the type of gun violence commonly labeled a “school shooting” in the United States. In Colombia, most incidents are linked to nonstate armed groups and organized criminal structures that use violence to control territory, impose a political agenda, or recruit young people. In the U.S., many school shootings involve individual perpetrators, gang violence, or domestic disputes rather than organized armed groups.
Colombian incidents frequently include occupation of school buildings, use of explosives, forced displacement of families, and targeted threats or killings of teachers, producing long-term disruption of school systems and communities. U.S. school-shooting data often track firearm discharges on school property, with widely varying definitions and lower frequencies when compared to conflict-zone attacks.
Another layer of complexity for comparison is that counting “school shootings” in the U.S. depends on methodology. Trackers with broader definitions that count any gunfire on school grounds report substantially higher totals than databases that count only incidents with injuries or deaths.
The K-12 School Shooting Database, which uses an inclusive scope, and other aggregators have recorded dozens to hundreds of school-related firearm incidents in 2025, depending on inclusion rules. Every town for Gun Safety’s tracker reported at least 141 incidents of gunfire on school grounds in 2025, with dozens of deaths and injuries. Education Week, which counts K-12 shootings that produced injuries or deaths, reported 15 such incidents in 2025 (with 48 people killed or injured) as of its most recent tracker, illustrating how much totals vary by definition.
Even using the broadest U.S. counts, researchers and aid groups say the pattern of repeated, community-wide attacks on schools in conflict settings, such as parts of Colombia, where entire municipalities see recurring incidents, occupations, and forced recruitment, is of a different scale and character than most U.S. school shootings.
Evidence shows nonstate players trying to impose curricula in Colombian schools
A recent bombardment in Guaviare that killed at least seven minors and a video documented by humanitarian monitors illustrates the human toll and the proximity of armed violence to classrooms in rural Colombia. Transitional-justice monitoring shows armed groups attempting to influence schooling directly, imposing content or commandeering facilities, and teachers are increasingly targeted for violence: Since the 2016 peace accord, Colombia ranks second globally in recorded crimes against educators, with hundreds of attacks documented.
Government officials say they are implementing the 2022 Safe Schools Declaration and drafted a 2023 action plan; the foreign ministry says it has convened interministerial working groups to coordinate protection. But child-protection groups say measures are insufficient. “There are at least 1,500 institutions at high risk,” said Felipe Cortes of Save the Children, calling for a national monitoring methodology, more prevention funding, legal reforms to prosecute attacks on education, and investment in repair and reconstruction.
Advocates caution that conflating conflict-driven attacks on education with domestic school shootings can obscure what each problem requires. Conflict-zone attacks call for humanitarian protection, cease-fire commitments, safe-school infrastructure, accountability for armed players, and post-conflict reconstruction. U.S. school shootings typically prompt gun-violence prevention measures, threat assessment, mental-health interventions, and school-safety protocols. Tailoring policy to the root causes, whether armed conflict or domestic gun access and social dynamics, is essential to protect students and teachers.