BOGOTA, COLOMBIA – A new annual report published Tuesday by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has delivered a stark assessment of Colombia’s deepening security crisis, finding that harm to civilian communities from ongoing armed violence reached its highest level in 10 years in 2025.
The humanitarian organization’s findings paint a grim picture of widespread displacement and restriction across rural and regional parts of the country: the total number of people forced to flee their homes amid clashes between criminal gangs, rebel factions, and state forces doubled over 2024, hitting 235,000. Concurrently, the number of civilians trapped in forced lockdowns imposed by armed groups on small towns and villages jumped by 99% compared to the prior year.
Colombia’s internal conflict has stretched across decades, with rebel factions and drug trafficking organizations long battling government forces for control of strategic rural territories, including key smuggling corridors central to the global cocaine trade. A landmark 2016 peace accord between the Colombian government and the country’s largest insurgent group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), delivered a notable reduction in rural violence for years after the agreement was signed. But in the wake of FARC’s demobilization, fragmented smaller armed groups have moved to seize the power vacuum left behind, extorting local businesses through illegal taxes and terrorizing civilian residents who resist their control, driving a steady erosion of security across much of the countryside.
Olivier Dubois, the ICRC’s head of mission in Colombia, emphasized that the catastrophic humanitarian conditions recorded in 2025 are the outcome of a gradual decline that the organization has flagged to stakeholders since 2018.
Over the past four years, the administration of Colombian President Gustavo Petro has pursued a strategy of de-escalating rural violence, launching formal peace negotiations with the country’s remaining active insurgent groups and reaching bilateral ceasefire agreements with several factions. But critics of this approach warn that armed groups have exploited the ceasefire periods to reorganize, rearm, and consolidate their control over civilian communities. These groups have also ramped up the forced recruitment of children into their criminal and armed ranks, the criticism notes.
Political violence has also accelerated sharply across the country. Last year, a presidential candidate was shot in the head during a public campaign rally in Bogota and later succumbed to his injuries; Colombian authorities have attributed the attack to one of the nation’s active rebel groups.
Earlier this year, the United Nations Human Rights Office in Colombia also sounded the alarm, describing the country’s security trajectory as “backsliding” and confirming that targeted killings of human rights defenders rose by 9% in 2025. The ICRC’s report adds further data to this assessment, noting that casualties from explosive devices – including landmines and drone-deployed ordnance – rose 33% year-over-year to 965 people killed or injured in 2025.
In its concluding appeal, the ICRC called on all parties involved in Colombia’s internal armed conflict to uphold fundamental protections for civilian populations, and to safeguard the rights of people who wish to exit hostilities. The organization stressed that adherence to international humanitarian law is a non-negotiable obligation, not an optional standard.
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