Colombia’s Ministerio de Tecnologías de la Información y las Comunicaciones (Ministry of Information Technologies and Communications, or MinTIC) will create a specialized working group to monitor what social media platforms are doing to detect and remove content that criminal structures use to recruit minors, the ministry announced on August 28, 2026. The group will meet weekly to check whether the platforms and other digital-industry actors are meeting the commitments they have made.

Minister Alexandra Falla Zerrate made the announcement after meeting with representatives of the Asociación Latinoamericana de Internet (Latin American Internet Association, or Alai), a Montevideo-based industry association whose members include Meta (NASDAQ: META), TikTok, Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL), Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), X and MercadoLibre (NASDAQ: MELI). According to the ministry, the meeting examined the growth of the problem and the way criminal structures use digital platforms to approach children and adolescents.

The announcement came four days after Human Rights Watch published a 124-page report on the recruitment of minors by armed groups in Colombia. Based on its analysis of data from the Defensoría del Pueblo (Ombudsman’s Office), the organization counted at least 1,500 children and adolescents recruited since 2021, with a sharp rise in cases since 2023, and found that dissident factions of the demobilized FARC were behind the large majority of reported cases, and that more than half of all reported cases were in the department of Cauca. The report’s researchers reviewed more than 70 accounts and 40 posts on platforms including Facebook and TikTok that glorified membership in armed groups or invited users to join them, and concluded that the platforms had not effectively detected or removed that content and that in some cases their algorithms appeared to promote it.

“Armed groups in Colombia are recruiting children with impunity, as protection systems are failing, and social media platforms have become a more effective recruiting ground,” said Juanita Goebertus, Americas director at Human Rights Watch, when the report was released.

Separately, the Defensoría del Pueblo registered 97 cases of forced recruitment of minors between January 1 and July 31, 2026, according to El Espectador, after 684 cases in all of 2024 and 428 in 2025. The agency cautioned that the lower reported figure does not necessarily mean recruitment has fallen, since many victims and families do not report out of fear, distrust of institutions or normalization of the violence.

Five measures

The ministry listed five measures coming out of the meeting. The first is the working group itself, which will provide permanent follow-up on the actions taken by platforms and other ecosystem actors and verify compliance with the commitments made to prevent recruitment.

The second concerns detection technology. Participants discussed the role of artificial intelligence in identifying and filtering recruitment-related content and concluded that, while automated tools catch and remove a significant share of posts, they must be complemented by interdisciplinary human review to catch material that slips past the filters. Falla urged the digital-industry participants to build teams of people who understand Colombian forms of communication, whether visual, verbal or written, so that they can recognize this type of messaging and act on it immediately.

The third measure is a push to stop the content from being published in the first place rather than removing it after the fact. Falla said she was concerned about the circulation of content that can be used to lure or induce minors into recruitment and called for technological tools, including properly programmed detection algorithms, that identify and block such posts before they go up.

The fourth addresses the share of content that evades detection. Raúl Echeberría, Alai’s executive director, told the meeting that platforms currently remove more than 90% of the identified content related to the problem. Falla responded that the challenge is to keep cutting the percentage that gets past detection mechanisms and to reach 100% neutralization of that content.

The fifth measure is coordination. The ministry and the industry representatives agreed that confronting the online recruitment of minors requires joint action by the authorities, the technology platforms, other digital-ecosystem actors and families.

What the platforms have said

In written responses to Human Rights Watch that were published as annexes to the report, both Meta and ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, said their policies prohibit content that promotes, supports or champions violent organizations, including Colombian armed groups, and that they had removed the profiles the organization flagged. According to El Tiempo, Meta reported removing 16 Facebook profiles and TikTok reported removing 35 profiles and their associated content. TikTok also told the organization that between January and March 2026 it removed 99.4% of content in Colombia that violated its policy on violent organizations and individuals before it was reported, that it blocks search terms associated with criminal organizations, and that users under 16 cannot access direct messages or group chats where those features are available.

Human Rights Watch’s own conclusion was that the platforms have not been able to effectively detect and prevent the spread of this content. According to El Tiempo, the full report recommends that the platforms establish specific reporting channels adapted to children in Spanish and in relevant indigenous languages, preserve evidence when content is removed, and publicly report on their compliance with child-safety obligations under international standards and Colombian law.

Falla, a social communications graduate of the Universidad Externado de Colombia with more than three decades in the audiovisual and public television sector, took office with the administration of President Abelardo de la Espriella, which was inaugurated on August 7, 2026. The ministry said that for Falla the protection of minors is a priority issue. The announcement did not specify who will sit on the working group or whether the platforms’ commitments will be made public.

Headline photo: Minister Alexandra Falla Zerrate with representatives of the Asociación Latinoamericana de Internet and the digital industry at the ministry. (Photo courtesy MinTIC)

Colombia’s technology minister, Alexandra Falla Zerrate, swore in three senior officials on August 13, 2026, giving the Ministerio de Tecnologías de la Información y las Comunicaciones (Ministry of Information and Communications Technologies), or MinTIC, a full leadership bench six days after President Abelardo De la Espriella took office.

MinTIC reported in May 2026 that rural household internet access had reached 56.9%, passing half for the first time, and that the gain had left the urban-rural gap at around 20 percentage points. The ministry presented those figures to a team of economists from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in a session led by then Vice Minister of Connectivity Gloria Patricia Perdomo — the post one of the new appointees now takes over.

That post goes to Camilo Carrascal Vergel, an electronics engineer. Germán Enrique Bacca Medina takes the Vice Ministry of Digital Transformation, and Magda Yolima Amaya Arévalo becomes secretary general, according to the ministry, which supplied the biographical details that follow.

Carrascal Vergel brings more than 20 years across connectivity, regulation, infrastructure, digital inclusion, digital television, information security, data and innovation, and has worked in the public sector on initiatives to widen digital infrastructure and access to communications services in Colombia. Bacca Medina is a lawyer specializing in financial and securities law, with postgraduate study in communications law and in competition and competition economics, and has held posts at the Superintendencia de Industria y Comercio (Superintendency of Industry and Commerce) and the Comisión de Regulación de Comunicaciones (Communications Regulation Commission), alongside work in the private sector and in academia.

Amaya Arévalo takes the Secretariat General. She is a lawyer with a specialization in administrative law and a master’s degree in public management. She has more than 15 years of experience in public management and the handling of public funds. She previously served at the Agencia Nacional del Espectro (National Spectrum Agency) as deputy director for institutional support, with responsibility for administrative and financial processes and for authorizing expenditure.

Amaya Arévalo resigned three days into the job. President De la Espriella publicly instructed Falla on August 15 to review the ministry’s recent appointments and verify appointees’ backgrounds; a ministry document accepting Amaya Arévalo’s resignation effective that date was reported by La República. Semana reported that the appointment had come under scrutiny after it emerged that Amaya Arévalo had worked at the Fondo de Financiamiento de la Infraestructura Educativa (Fund for Financing Educational Infrastructure), or FFIE, an entity tied to the Ministry of Education under the previous government of Gustavo Petro. MinTIC’s organizational chart lists Germán Enrique Bacca Medina, the vice minister of digital transformation, as acting secretary general.

The mandate

MinTIC has named connectivity, artificial intelligence, innovation and the strengthening of public media as the four axes of its agenda, describing them as a technological transformation meant to generate social and economic development, lift productivity and reduce the country’s digital divides.

Those sit inside a longer set of objectives De la Espriella set for the portfolio: a digital sovereignty strategy built on national technological capacity, continued expansion of connectivity into rural and remote areas, and adoption of artificial intelligence to raise productivity and competitiveness. The remainder cover more interoperable state digital services, digital skills training, a secure and resilient digital ecosystem, and a strengthened public media and audiovisual sector.

In his inaugural address, the president said Colombia must join the Fourth Industrial Revolution and pledged to train children and young people in artificial intelligence, programming, data science and robotics:

I do not want, dear compatriots, for our young people to be simple consumers of technology created in other latitudes. I want them to be innovative creators and protagonists of the digital world.

The new minister

Falla has held posts at TransMilenio, as deputy manager for communications and user services, and between 2012 and 2015, she was a member of the Autoridad Nacional de Televisión (National Television Authority), where she led the rollout of digital terrestrial television and took part in decisions on television concessions and broadcast spectrum. From 2015, she directed the Fundación Patrimonio Fílmico Colombiano (Colombian Film Heritage Foundation), and in 2024 she became the first woman to head the Asociación de las Televisiones Educativas y Culturales Iberoamericanas, the association of Ibero-American educational and cultural television networks.

The swearing-in came three days after a magnitude 7.4 earthquake centered on San José del Palmar, in Chocó, struck Colombia on August 10, after which De la Espriella declared an economic emergency to speed reconstruction.

Headline photo: Colombia’s technology minister, Alexandra Falla Zerrate, with the ministry’s two new vice ministers and its new secretary general at their swearing-in, August 13, 2026. From left: Camilo Carrascal Vergel, vice minister of connectivity; the minister; Magda Yolima Amaya Arévalo, secretary general; and Germán Enrique Bacca Medina, vice minister of digital transformation. (Photo courtesy MinTIC)

Colombia’s Information and Communications Technology Minister, Alexandra Falla Zerrate, and Justice and Law Minister Iván Cancino González met in Bogotá on Monday, August 24, 2026, with representatives from Claro, the Colombian unit of Mexico’s América Móvil (NYSE: AMX), Tigo, the local brand of Luxembourg-based Millicom International Cellular (NASDAQ: TIGO), WOM and other mobile carriers to define measures for blocking unauthorized cell phone communications from the country’s prisons. The meeting is the government’s latest attempt to stop inmates from using contraband phones to order extortion and coordinate other crimes from behind bars.

The talks were convened by the Ministerio de Tecnologías de la Información y las Comunicaciones (Ministry of Information and Communications Technology, or MinTIC) and the Ministerio de Justicia y del Derecho (Ministry of Justice and Law, or MinJusticia) to review measures already in place to restrict illegal signals inside penitentiary facilities and to identify the technical, legal and operational obstacles that remain unresolved.

“Our purpose is clear: authority to shut the door on crime, technology in the service of security, and results that protect the peace of mind of Colombians,” Cancino told La FM after the meeting. He said the working group reviewed what has already been done, the current state of measures restricting unauthorized communications in penitentiary facilities, and the technical and operational challenges still to be resolved.

Representatives of the mobile carriers raised concerns and proposals about the measures under study and said they were willing to work with authorities, according to MinTIC. The ministries have not detailed what a new blocking mechanism would look like; officials said specifics would be announced in the coming days once technical evaluations with the carriers are complete.

The problem long predates Monday’s meeting. In January 2026, Instituto Nacional Penitenciario y Carcelario (National Penitentiary and Prison Institute, or INPEC) director Col. Daniel Gutiérrez told Noticias RCN, in comments reported by Infobae, that none of the 16 nationally run prisons equipped with signal jammers were effectively blocking illegal signals: six were nominally active but not generating a working block because they ran on 12- to 15-year-old GSM-era technology unable to keep pace with 4G and 5G networks, and the other 10 were entirely out of service. Gutiérrez also said a signal-blocking trial at the maximum-security wing in Cómbita, Boyacá, left the state facing more than $50 billion COP in fines after the jamming disrupted legitimate cell service for nearby residents — a preview of the balance regulators must strike between blocking prison communications and protecting service for law-abiding Colombians nearby.

The stakes were underscored in July 2026, when Colombia’s Fiscalía General de la Nación (Attorney General’s Office, or Fiscalía) charged 17 people, including five INPEC guards, with extortion tied to a scheme run from the El Barne maximum-security prison in Cómbita, according to Vanguardia, citing Agencia EFE. Prosecutors said the guards allowed cell phones and other contraband into the prison so inmates could call victims across several departments and demand payment on behalf of armed criminal structures. Finance Colombia has previously reported on the pattern: a scheme run by the Satanás gang, whose imprisoned leader and members kept extorting Bogotá residents with smuggled phones even after signal jammers were installed, since many of the devices had been pulled from service due to obsolescence or court orders won by nearby residents whose own legitimate calls the jammers had blocked.

The National Police and National Army are also taking part in the effort, MinTIC said, working alongside the ministries and carriers to prevent criminal structures from continuing to direct operations from inside penitentiary facilities. The working group left commitments to keep advancing solutions that strengthen communications control in and around Colombia’s prisons, though the government has yet to say when any new blocking mechanism will take effect.

Headline photo: Ministers Alexandra Falla Zerrate and Iván Cancino González meet with mobile carrier representatives at MinTIC headquarters in Bogotá. (Photo courtesy MinTIC)

“This will be the largest academic agenda we’ve had in our history,” Díaz said, noting that ANDICOM 2026 is spread across two venues for the first time, the Las Américas complex and the Hotel Faranda Collection. CINTEL, the Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo en Tecnologías de la Información y las Comunicaciones (Center for Research and Development in Information and Communications Technologies), runs technology-adoption projects with Colombian government bodies including the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology alongside private-sector clients.

This year’s theme, “Unleashing the Power of AI,” organizes the program around four pillars: artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and digital trust, connectivity and digital infrastructure, and public policy and regulation. Manuel Martínez Niño, CINTEL’s executive director, told El Universal that the congress has become the most important gathering of its kind not only in Colombia but in Latin America, bringing together authorities, government, business, academia, multilateral banks and legislators to work on the country’s digital inclusion.

The congress opened September 1 with the ANDICOM Knowledge Hub at the Faranda Collection, running two parallel sessions Díaz called central to the week: one on the transition to post-quantum cryptography, ahead of what Díaz said industry estimates place around 2029 as the point when quantum computers could break current encryption standards, and another on AI governance and the oversight of autonomous agents.

The European Union is this year’s guest of honor, sending a diplomatic and commercial delegation for sessions on the bloc’s approach to AI regulation, cybersecurity and quantum computing. European companies account for 22% of foreign direct investment in Colombia’s technology sector and have created more than 120,000 jobs in the country, according to figures CINTEL presented for the congress and reported by Cartagena al Día.

Wednesday’s opening ceremony was expected to include Colombia’s Minister of Information and Communications Technology, Alexandra Falla Zerrate, along with European Union representatives outlining the new government’s technology road map. The day’s keynote speakers included Pilar Manchón, senior director of research strategy at Google AI (NASDAQ: GOOGL), who has described artificial intelligence as “the most profound and transformative technology humanity has ever developed,” and Marc Reguera, worldwide general manager for Microsoft Fabric (NASDAQ: MSFT) customer engagement, on the next generation of intelligent business applications. A separate afternoon panel brought together Julissa Cruz, director of sustainable digital infrastructure at CAF – Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean; Alexia González Fanfalone, head of the connectivity services and infrastructures unit at the OECD; Carlos Lugo Silva of the International Telecommunication Union; and a public-policy representative from Amazon Web Services to compare regulatory experiences across countries. In parallel at the Faranda Collection, a forum on financing digital infrastructure and connectivity brought in the European Investment Bank, the World Bank and Colombia’s Financiera de Desarrollo Nacional.

Thursday’s agenda centered on a regulatory panel gathering officials from across the region: Gonzalo Balseiro, president of Uruguay’s Unidad Reguladora de Servicios de Comunicaciones (Communications Services Regulatory Unit); Sergio Sotomayor Rodríguez, director of Colombia’s National Spectrum Agency; Felipe Augusto Díaz Suaza, executive director of the Comisión de Regulación de Comunicaciones (Communications Regulation Commission); and Lucas Gallitto, head of Latin America and the Caribbean for the GSMA. The day also featured a panel of telecommunications-company executives from WOM, Claro, Tigo and LinkMax discussing the sector’s challenges and opportunities.

Friday’s keynote speakers included Eric Martorell Bouvier of Hewlett Packard Enterprise (NYSE: HPE), on digital sovereignty and data infrastructure. Díaz said the closing keynote was expected to include President Abelardo de la Espriella, who was set to address technology and AI as drivers of the country’s economic and social development.

Díaz pointed to a Wednesday afternoon session on AI in the creative industries, covering the technology’s use in music and film production, as one he was personally looking forward to. The congress’s commercial exhibition includes more than 215 companies, and its mobile app lets attendees flag sessions and schedule meetings, a feature Díaz said has become central to the networking Loren Moss described as one of ANDICOM’s main draws.