About 19,000 children have crossed the dangerous Darien jungle, located between Colombia and Panama, to reach the United States so far in 2021, a figure that marked a “historical maximum” of migrant minors as warned by the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef). Half of the total are under five years of age, and This historical peak is about three times more than the figure recorded during the previous five years combined.
The “growing influx” of migrant children through the Darien “should be urgently treated as a serious humanitarian crisis throughout the region, beyond Panama.”, denounced Laurent Duvillier, Unicef regional communication chief for Latin America and the Caribbean, and urged governments to guarantee the protection of children during their trip and to coordinate a humanitarian response.
UNICEF also warned of an increase in children crossing the Darien alone. In 2020 eight children had not been accompanied, in 2021 there were 153. “Most do not travel alone, they travel accompanied by their parents, but many things happen along the way through the jungle, sometimes the parents are left behind, the mother is injured or they are separated when crossing a river,” he said. Duvillier.
The call Darien plug, a 266-kilometer jungle area where the thick vegetation sometimes makes it difficult to see the sun, there are wild animals (even poisonous snakes), rushing rivers and criminal groups, became a corridor for irregular migrants trying to reach the United States.
“Every child who crosses the Darien on foot is a survivor”, affirmed the director of Unicef for Latin America and the Caribbean, Jean Gough, detailing that “Deep in the jungle, robbery, rape and human trafficking are as dangerous as wild animals, insects and the utter lack of clean water”.
According to UNICEF data, in 2021 at least five children were found dead in the jungle. And between last January and September, the UN entity registered 29 complaints of sexual abuse of adolescent girls during the trip.
UNICEF noted that The number of migrant children and families crossing the jungle is expected to continue to increase in the coming weeks and months., before which “it is expanding its humanitarian response to address the urgent needs” of that population.
“UNICEF urges governments to ensure the protection of children on the move throughout their journey and to coordinate the implementation of a stronger humanitarian response in all countries involved,” the United Nations body said. It should also “promote the integration of migrant families in host communities and address the root causes that lead them to migrate.”
Between last January and September, 91,300 migrants in transit arrived in Panama after crossing the jungle, a figure that triples the 2016 record, according to data from the Panamanian National Migration Service (SNM) cited by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in a report released last Friday.
Most were Haitians (56,600), many of them accompanied by minors, followed by Cubans (12,800), Venezuelans (1,500), as well as nationals from Asian and African countries, including Bangladesh, Senegal, Ghana, Uzbekistan, India and Nepal. said the IOM. In the first nine months of 2021, minors represented 20 percent of this mobile population, when four years ago it was barely two percent.
Entire Haitian families with children born in Chile or Brazil, countries in which they had settled years ago, and even with babies born during the journey, are traveling to countries in the north of the American continent such as the United States, Canada or Mexico.
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