The United States, Canada and six other member countries of the OAS announced this Thursday, October 6, new aid for migrants and refugees in Latin America, as part of the 52nd General Assembly of the regional bloc in Lima.

The aid will be used for employment programs, attention to minors, social reintegration and management of migrants, as well as campaigns against xenophobia and illegal migrationreported the US State Department.

These new commitments emerged during a ministerial follow-up meeting to the Los Angeles Declaration on Immigration, adopted at the IX Summit of the Americas last June in California.

The United States will contribute more than $240 million and Canada an additional $55 million. In turn, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Costa Rica, Barbados and Colombia They will develop projects such as the registration of refugees, assistance for the return of unaccompanied children, the reintegration of displaced persons and the modification of legislation.

The funds provided by the United States were announced by Antony Blinken, the head of American diplomacy, shortly before chairing the ministerial meeting on migration, an issue that generates tensions throughout the hemisphere and particularly affects Washington at the border with Mexico.

“We have more displaced people around the world than ever before in our history, over 100 million,” Blinken pointed out. “And our own hemisphere is experiencing this in profound and new ways,” he added.

Drama in the Darien

Panamanian Foreign Minister Erika Mouyne made a sincere allusion to the issue during the plenary session of the Assembly.

“This drama belongs to everyone, to mine, to my Caribbean brothers. Everyone needs our support, we are responsible and we cannot turn our backs on them. There is a migration crisis that needs to be addressed,” he said.

Panama faces a wave of migrants crossing its territory en route to the United States, in a journey through the inhospitable jungle and with multiple dangers, such as wild animals – including poisonous snakes -, mighty rivers and criminal groups.

Official data indicates that more than 160,000 migrants, the vast majority of them Venezuelans, have crossed Panama’s Darién jungle, on the border with Colombia, so far this year, a figure that shatters the record recorded on the whole by 2021, 133,000 migrants.

“The story I tell you today is that of Sharon, a mother I met in Maracaibo, Venezuela. She went from Venezuela, passing through Colombia and arriving in Panama. She had five little ones with her, the youngest I carried her and she was burning with fever. All of their children had vomiting and diarrhoea,” Mouyne explained during the afternoon plenary session.

He described the situation as a “human drama experienced every day in the Darien jungle”, where, he said, many migrants lose their children during the journey.

Costa Rica, neighbor of Panama and Nicaragua, also mentioned the migratory situation in the region.

“I urge OAS member states to jointly seek answers to this growing regional challenge”said Arnoldo André Tinoco, Costa Rican Minister of Foreign Relations.

He assured that Costa Rica, “as a country of transit and destination, is experiencing the increasing arrival of migrants and refugees, due to the deterioration of political, social and economic conditions in other brotherly countries”.

The Biden administration is promoting regional cooperation to address this issue. “No country can fully meet the needs of immigrants without the support of its neighbors and partners,” State Department Assistant Secretary for the Americas Emily Mendrala said at a press conference.

Costa Rica had nearly one million immigrants in July, mainly from Nicaragua, Cuba, Venezuela and Haiti, and 140,000 pending refugee claims.

However, “our slogan has been not to give up in order to continue providing humanitarian care and protection to these vulnerable people, despite the great pressure that is testing our institutional and economic capacities”, the Costa Rican Foreign Minister told the AEO.

*With information from AFP.