Colombia’s Petro to Report Ivan Mordisco to ICC for Recruiting Minors

Written on 11/19/2025
Josep Freixes
Colombia’s Petro will report Ivan Mordisco to the International Criminal Court (ICC) the forced recruitment of minors amid controversy over children killed in bombings. Credit: OSeveno, CC BY-SA 4.0 / Wikimedia.

After a week of controversy over the minors killed in the Colombian army’s bombing of a structure belonging to the illegal armed group led by alias Ivan Mordisco, President Gustavo Petro announced that he will report the guerrilla leader to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for recruiting minors, an act that violates the principles of International Humanitarian Law (IHL).

The Colombian government, which spent much of its term rejecting this type of aerial bombing of illegal structures in the country’s jungles, precisely alleging the possible presence of minors forcibly recruited by these criminal groups, has spent several days facing criticism — including from the left — over several bombings that have caused 15 deaths among minors, seven of them in the most recent one in the jungles of the Guaviare department.

Although the president defends himself by asserting that there was an intelligence error that failed to warn of the presence of these minors in the areas bombed by the military, the political storm is straining even the various leftist forces that support the government, but that criticize this action for its consequences and also because it represents a violation of what the government itself had maintained until just a few months ago.

Colombia’s Petro to report Ivan Mordisco to ICC for recruiting minors

According to reports from the National Institute of Legal Medicine, between August and November of this year at least 15 minors were killed in operations against those illegal structures, seven of them in the latest bombing in which 25 guerrilla fighters were killed.

The president himself publicly acknowledged that at least 12 of those youths had ages confirmed through official reports, although he noted that there were more deaths still undergoing verification. According to Petro, one of the most recent bombings left eight dead in Arauca, including a 16-year-old teenager, as confirmed by Legal Medicine.

From his perspective, these operations are carried out in full respect of International Humanitarian Law. “We have not violated IHL,” Petro said, defending his strategy: He argued that halting the bombings would amount to allowing armed groups to continue recruiting minors to “shield themselves” from state action.

Petro is blunt in denouncing that the illegal structures under Mordisco’s command recruit children and adolescents as part of their war strategy, something that was already known. According to his own figures, this dissident faction has incorporated more than 200 minors, many of them from Indigenous communities, whom he accused of subjecting to armed “slavery.”

The president maintains that his decision to turn to ICC not only aims to show a firm rejection of this practice, but is based on the Rome Statute and international norms that strictly prohibit the use of minors in armed conflicts. In fact, it is worth recalling that keeping minors out of the war was always one of the main conditions demanded by the government from illegal armed groups in order to explore dialogue tables, within the framework of Petro’s “Total Peace” policy.

Practical effects for Colombia of a complaint against Ivan Mordisco before ICC

The decision to bring Mordisco before ICC has a more symbolic than real effect, although it also triggers complex debates about the legitimacy and consequences of the government’s military policy. On one hand, there are voices that support Petro, noting that only an international action — hardly applicable to Colombia’s internal armed conflict — can halt a pattern of brutal recruitment.

On the other hand, questions arise about the morality of bombing areas where minors might be present, even if they have been recruited by the dissidents, a stance defended by the same government until just a few months ago.

In this sense, some critics point out that although the state has the obligation to respond to armed groups that use children, it must also guarantee the protection of those same minors as victims of a larger crime. The tension between military action and the duty to protect children becomes, once again, an ethical crossroads.

Petro does not hide that one of his motivations for pushing this international complaint is his long-term vision for peace in Colombia. He recalled that since the year 2000 — meaning more than two decades before his administration — more than 400 minors have died in combat, according to his estimates, a figure that, for him, shows the persistence of modes of confrontation that must be transformed.

In addition, the president sought to highlight an achievement of his administration: So far, his government has managed to free 2,411 children linked to the armed conflict, according to government data. That figure, he said, is not just a statistic but a step toward “real protection” of children in the territories most affected by violence.

Mordisco announced a ‘revolutionary trial’ against President Petro over the bombing

And in the midst of all this controversy, Ivan Mordisco’s guerrilla group weighed in, taking advantage of the political and media uproar. In a video made public on Tuesday, Nov. 18, the guerrilla leader — who has become the number one military target of this government — said that his armed group will seek to create a “revolutionary trial” against the current president over the bombing of one of their structures in Guaviare, an operation that caused the deaths of 25 people, including seven minors.

“The FARC-EP [the name usurped by this dissident group of the now-defunct former guerrilla] will evaluate revolutionary trials against the material and intellectual perpetrators of the murder of children of the working and laboring class. The rulers who from their armchairs promote war, militarism, and bombings may well be put on trial. The extrajudicial executions of false judicial positives have been a constant in the year 2025, and the figure of 6,402 (in reference to this type of killing that the courts attribute to the military during Alvaro Uribe’s presidency) has been surpassed in unimaginable ways,” Ivan Mordisco said in his address, in what is considered a direct threat against President Petro.

However, Mordisco’s accusations were also aimed at journalists. “Some media outlets and journalists are directly tied to the war against the people,” he concluded in his message.

For his part, Gustavo Petro responded to the video by recalling that this group’s threat against his life is not new. “He has been threatening to kill me for years. He even tried to kill me on mafia orders during the July 20 parade in 2024. His cocaine buyer, Mr. Alirio Zarate, alias ‘El Runcho,’” the president wrote on his X social media account.

Petro added that this individual who traffics with Ivan Mordisco’s group “is not the working class, and for him they work and squander the lives of their men and of the underage combatants for the business with him and with the foreign buyers of Colombian coltan. Colombian Uribista politicians and far-right politicians from Florida in the United States also want to imprison me — what’s the difference? They are the same thing: mafia governance.”

Related: Colombia’s Opposition to Seek Censure of Defense Minister Over Minors’ Deaths in Bombings.