Kerven is 10 years old and has just finished a 6,000-kilometer migratory odyssey. Born in Haiti, the boy with the sad look lived until recently in Chile, where his parents had arrived fleeing the misery and chaos of their country.. In September, they – along with the youngest of the family, aged three – set out again for the United States. On that route they passed through the Darién Gap, a traumatic experience that the boy and his little sister will never forget.
So far in 2023, more than 70,000 children and adolescents have crossed this jungle tropical, more than in any other year. They are one in five migrants, according to data from the Ministry of Public Security of Panama. And they have done it in the midst of the siege of wild and poisonous animals, walking through abysses, climbing hills, crossing rivers, always living with death. All this, from dawn to dusk, for five, six or more days if there is one of the usual rains that turn the 160 kilometer road into an impassable swamp.
The drama of migrant children is not new, but it has exploded this year with a number of people never seen before arriving at the assistance posts that Unicef has set up in Bajo Chiquito, San Vicente and Lajas Blancas, the towns of Panama. to whom those thousands of desperate souls arrive after crossing the jungle. The same day Kerven did it, a Thursday in October, another 69 minors arrived.
The United Nations volunteers who work at these sites cannot believe the stories the children tell them. They speak of armed gangs that assault them, of sexual violence of all kinds and, even worse, of corpses abandoned along the route – in some cases, members of their own families. And if we take into account that 57% of children are less than 5 years olds, the damage that the Darién tragedy is doing is incalculable.
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Reasons to migrate
The Darién Gap is one of the three migratory points in Latin America that have reached records for post-pandemic people transit. The other two are the exits from Venezuela and the north of Central America and Mexico.
But the passage through the jungle that separates Colombia from Central America requires human beings – especially children – a physical and psychological effort impossible to imagine. Even so, the numbers of migrants do not stop growing, because the final horizon – the mirage of the United States – is irresistible for those who have nothing to lose.
In 2018, when Unicef was already alerting about this situation, 522 minors (of 50 nationalities) crossed the Darién at that time, according to data from the National Immigration Service of Panama. Five years later, the number has already exceeded 70,000, coming from almost 100 countries, being Venezuelans, Ecuadorians and Haitians are the first three.
The figures are impressive, and even more so when counting the deaths: the International Organization for Migration (IOM) stated that between January 2018 and June 2023, 258 people have died or disappeared in Darién. At least 41 of them were minors.
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“We are talking about boys and girls who migrate with their parents in almost the entire continent, from Chile to the United States or Canada,” Laurent Duvillier, from the UNICEF Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean, tells Connectas. The official explains that in the last decade the profile of migrants has changed. If before they were young, single men who left their families behind in search of a better life and a job to send them remittances, today the panorama is completely different: “They are entire families; sometimes, alone boys and girls who migrate and leave no one behind.”
The vast majority is made up of very poor people who are forced to undergo such a journey because they cannot pay the between 350 and 500 dollars that the coyotes charge to drive the caravans along the easiest path. But poverty is not the only reason that explains the record numbers.
These families They also flee from gang violence. who dominate their countries (especially in Haiti). And also from the effects of climate change, which, for example, has taken away their access to drinking water in their places of origin.
But also, Many travel hopeful for an ideal future that other migrants who managed to reach the United States paint for them.: “Groups and people move forward because they are impacted by a media campaign on social networks that pushes them to walk and walk for months.” This is said by Elías Cornejo, coordinator of Migrant Services of the NGO Fe y Alegría of Panama, which works daily with thousands of illegal migrants who arrive in that country.
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Governments in action?
“Not enough is done to care for the children and adolescents that Darién goes through. Because, specifically, there is no specialized care center”
While the drama in Darién only grows bigger, the governments of the countries through which the migrant caravans full of children pass are beginning to rehearse actions. On October 7, the presidents of Panama (Laurentino Cortizo) and Costa Rica (Rodrigo Chaves) visited the Lajas Blancas reception center and then did what they usually do: They signed a “joint declaration” on the need to “order migratory flows.” Although at the time of writing this article they were still in disarray.
Meanwhile, in Mexico, on October 22, President Andrés Manuel Obrador received his peers from 11 Latin American countries, including Venezuela, Cuba, Honduras, Haiti and Colombia, to address the problem. Everyone was photographed smiling, dressed in comfortable white guayaberas, with the promise that they will address the problem in the countries where most of the migrants come from. That is, those they govern. But they did not answer a key question: why had they not done so until now?
“We must remember that migrating is a fundamental right, each person can decide where to go,” clarifies Duvillier. For the Unicef representative, the States They must above all commit to guaranteeing protection to migrant children “at all times during the journey, both in the countries of origin and in those of transit and destination.” But in addition, the duties of governments include guarantees of access to the education and health systems of children who do not manage to cross the border into the United States. That is, those who are “trapped” in countries like Mexico.
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Cornejo, from Fe y Alegría, maintains that the efforts of organizations like the ones he represents are not enough to address the problem. “Not enough is done to care for the children and adolescents that Darién goes through. Because, specifically, there is no specialized care center. The authorities do not allow the construction of a shelter for minors and that makes the issue a little difficult. We are not going to say that nothing is being done, but it is not enough.”
Although the official figures do not confirm it, the international organization of Jesuit origin ventures a figure that impacts even more: Until October, more than 100,000 minors transited through Darién in 2023. And he anticipates that the situation is going to worsen in the coming months: “Evidently, the process is not going to stop, it is a flow that no one is going to stop,” Cornejo admits.
Meanwhile, Kerven – one of the 70,000, 80,000, 100,000? children who survived the most hostile jungle in the world – move forward together with his family. He has already “known” six countries in addition to his native Haiti (Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Panama and Costa Rica). And he has maybe another six more to go. All of this without anything guaranteeing that he will be able to enter the United States, much less access to a school, a hospital and a decent roof over his head. Universal rights that for someone his age should already be resolved in the world of the 21st century.
LEONARDO OLIVA
CONNECT
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