Captured Childhoods: Brave journalists launch cross-border investigation in Latin America

The recruitment of children and young people by organised crime is one of the most challenging security issues facing parts of Latin America today. Yet the hidden nature of the problem, combined with the risks involved in reporting it, can make it difficult to document.

A new cross-border investigation, Captured Childhoods (Infancias capturadas), set out to do just that.

Published by media outlets Cuestión Pública and Vorágine in Colombia, and GK and Lupa Media from Ecuador, the collaborative investigation was part of the work supported by the Brave Media programme, a global initiative led by BBC Media Action. 

The investigation explored how criminal groups are recruiting boys, girls and teenagers in different regions of Colombia and Ecuador, examining the changing methods used by these networks and the institutional cracks that allow this illegal practice to continue.

The scale of the problem has recently been highlighted by UNICEF: one child is recruited and used every 20 hours by armed groups in Colombia. In a 2026 report they warn that the number of co-opted children has quadrupled over five years, in a context of escalating violence.

In Ecuador, authorities recognise child recruitment by criminal groups as a growing problem, although no official statistics currently exist. Local and international organisations report a spike in arrests of teenagers linked to organised crime, as well as record homicide rates among children.

Take Pablo, for example. In Quito, Ecuador, he began seeing armed men waiting for him outside his school when he was 15. Or Paula, who was recruited at 14 in Cauca, in southwestern Colombia, and eventually died in an armed confrontation. And then there is the story of a graduating class from a school in Putumayo, whose students ended up in the ranks of Comandos de la Frontera.

Led by Brave Media consortium partner SembraMedia and with editorial coordination by investigative journalism platform CONNECTAS, the investigation led to the joint publication of several impactful digital stories for a regional audience, covering a security challenge that is transnational in nature – and ever more urgent to address.

Collaboration over competition

The project emerged from a recognition that many of the issues affecting independent journalism in Latin America transcend national borders. Corruption, organised crime, drug trafficking and violence are regional challenges that often require cross-border reporting and collaboration.

Including getting journalists to share sources and facilitate access to other colleagues on the ground, collectively work on deployments, share research findings, and agree on formats, editorial guidelines and final output of the process – a real challenge in times of scoops, competition and fast journalism.

"We supported this project because it brings together four independent media outlets to investigate a complex issue that requires different perspectives and local knowledge, where each newsroom brings a deep understanding of its communities and relationships that the others could not replace,” says Naimid Cirelli, director of operations at SembraMedia.

“And beyond the stories they produce, we see cross-border collaboration as an opportunity to develop new ways of working. The value also lies in what remains after publication: journalists who know they can turn to one another for future reporting, and working relationships that can become a lasting source of resilience and support.”

The four media organisations developed a shared reporting strategy and investigated different angles of the problem across multiple locations. Reporting took place in Putumayo and Cauca in Colombia, and in Quito, Pedernales and Guayaquil in Ecuador.

The teams met regularly to exchange findings, test hypotheses and compare experiences across different territories.

The joint approach also covered safeguarding provisions and looked at ways to carry out field reporting with vulnerable contributors – recruited minors and survivors of trafficking but also local leaders, social workers, and the relatives of those at risk who are often also targeted by criminal groups if they decide to speak up.

"Most concerning, however, was to find entire communities where crime and violence have become part of everyday life and are often seen as one of the few available ways out of poverty,” says Carlos Eduardo Huertas, director of CONNECTAS.

Investigating illegal networks

Before embarking on field reporting and data gathering, journalists worked with child protection specialists and civil society organisations to better understand the scope of the problem and how it has evolved over the past decade in the continent’s increasingly volatile regions.

These conversations helped reporters identify emerging trends, including the use of social media and digital platforms as recruitment tools, and provided guidance on the legal, ethical and safeguarding considerations involved in reporting on children and adolescents affected by organised crime.

As a result, the teams identified three areas of focus:

1. The increasing recruitment of women in Colombia's Cauca region - where girls under 13 are co-opted at higher rates than boys their age.
2. The recruitment in Indigenous communities along the Colombia-Ecuador border.
3. The growing involvement of children and adolescents in criminal gangs in urban communities in Ecuador, where even schools are “territorialised” and become a new criminal marketplace.

They then went on to interview dozens of sources in each region – mothers searching for their missing children, teachers who had been extorted and intimidated, community leaders who campaign to give visibility to the issue, and young survivors who managed to escape.

"Sources were afraid to talk to us but at the same time gave us incredibly valuable insights into very serious crimes that are now part of their everyday lives,” says Emerson Rubio, editor of GK, who highlights how the teams had to “adjust their reporting plans constantly” to respond to what they encountered on the ground.

The investigations combined field reporting, interviews, data analysis and documentary research to build a deeper picture of how recruitment practices are changing and how different communities, and particularly vulnerable groups within them, are affected.

Safe reporting at the core

Throughout the project, the participating organisations followed strict safeguarding and ethical reporting protocols designed to protect sources and minimise the risk of re-traumatisation – and adhered to a “do no harm” approach.

This included comprehensive anonymisation techniques, such as omitting names, images and identifying details and modifying location information to avoid “jigsaw identification” of vulnerable sources.

With great knowledge of the areas and the best access to communities, local journalists played an important role in supporting this complex fieldwork. Risk assessments were also carried out before reporting trips, particularly in areas where organised criminal groups maintain a strong presence.

Supporting independent journalism

Captured Childhoods reflects Brave Media's wider mission to strengthen the resilience and sustainability of independent and public-interest media organisations around the world.

Through locally-led initiatives, Brave Media supports journalists and news outlets to investigate issues of public importance, strengthen collaboration and test new approaches to reporting in challenging environments.

As Brave’s main consortium partner in Latin America, SembraMedia leads several strands of work under the programme, including an accelerator programme for media organisations, the testing of a digital advertising model, and a study on how organised crime affect the ability of independent news outlets to produce vital information.

The Captured Childhoods investigation also highlights the value of partnerships between news outlets, support organisations and journalism networks to tackle stories that may be too complex or resource-intensive for a single newsroom to pursue alone.

For the journalists involved, Captured Childhoods demonstrates both the power and necessity of collaborative investigative reporting. By sharing expertise, resources and local knowledge, the participating teams were able to uncover a complex regional story that might otherwise have remained fragmented.

This investigation reminds us that some of the most important stories are also the hardest to tell.

By shining a light on children and young people caught up in criminal networks, the investigation brings visibility to a crisis that too often remains hidden in plain sight - and, we hope, helps drive the attention and action needed to protect those most at risk.

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Illustrations by Angie Pik