The southern border of Mexico lives with thousands of migrants stranded with their children amid increasing immigration restrictions from the United States.
Immigration policies that limit border crossings have unleashed a series of humanitarian emergencies among these populations and, in the case of women, are exposed to gender violence and sexual violence.
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The migratory crisis and the humanitarian consequences of the mobilization of vulnerable population puts everyone at risk; This is reflected by the Ecuadorian Estela Jhoanny López, a 19-year-old girl, who lies on the ground with her three sick children, two of them four-month-old twins and the oldest three-year-old, in Tapachula, a municipality on the border of Mexico with Guatemala .
“We are asking the Mexican government for help, We don’t have money, help us with the papersbecause the babies are in poor health,” he told EFE.
In the southern state of Chiapas, she and her children carry a cardboard asking for help: “Please help for the children’s diapers.”
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López represents the face of the migrant woman, who leaves his country with his family, regardless of the risks.
Migration with a woman’s face
Mexico registered an annual increase of more than 34% in migrant women in an irregular situation in 2022, when it detected 136,080, more than a third of them in Chiapas, according to the Migration Policy Unit of the Ministry of the Interior (Segob).
The women are a particularly vulnerable population within migrant groups because they are exposed to specific types of violence, especially those gender-based violence and sexual abuse.
According to the Hebrew Migrant Assistance Society (HIAS), approximately 50 to 60 percent of migrant women in Ciudad Juárez, located right on the border with the United States, have been victims of sexual violence.
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Lucero Espíndola De la Vega, coordinator of the office in Mexico, told EL DIARIO MX that migrant women can be victims in any space and time in which it moves towards the place of destination and even after.
“There also comes to be sexual violence against women who find themselves on the streets in search of shelters and how often there come to be assaults and violence as we other women suffer,” says Lucero.
INTERNATIONAL WRITING
With information from AFP
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