MSF reports increase in violence against migrants in Mexico and Central America

At a time when the migratory flow is breaking records, this Thursday the NGO Doctors Without Borders warned about a worrying increase in violence against migrants as they pass through Mexico and Central America.

When submitting your annual report, The organization reported that sexual violence arises mostly from Darién, between Panama and Colombia, and that kidnappings and physical violence occur in northeastern Mexico, in the state of Tamaulipas, on the border with Texas.

““We are extremely concerned about the normalization of situations of extreme violence, such as extortion, kidnapping and sexual violence that directly affect the physical and mental health of this population.”, he detailed. “It seems as if violence had become a mechanism for regulating the migratory flow” which, in addition, was made up of the most vulnerable population.

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) treated 36% more children under five years of age.

The migratory flow through Central America and Mexico, with more women and children, surpassed its own records in 2023 with more than half a million people who crossed the Dariéna route controlled by organized crime in which reports of abuse have been recurrent.

Although many people do not report sexual violence, they treated 232 people due to this emergency. The cases detected in Honduras and Guatemala were related to abuses that occurred in Darién and those in northern Guatemala and Mexico to abuses by authorities or kidnappings.

Sometimes, migrants were subjected to touching their genitals to search for money or valuablesalthough they did not describe these practices as attacks, the report indicates.

At the beginning of April another international organization, Human Rights Watch accused Panama and Colombia of failing to protect the hundreds of thousands of migrants crossing the Darien, to which the governments of both countries responded by asking the international community for more support to address the situation.

According to MSF, There is a deterioration in the security situation at many points along the route but, in addition, the increase in uncertainty due to changes in immigration regulations and the lack of clear information multiplied the vulnerability of migrants. and, therefore, violence, something that was noticeable in the last months of 2023 in Tamaulipas.

On that northeastern border of Mexico, MSF assisted 775 victims of violence. 22% of them girls, boys and adolescents. One in four mental health consultations in Matamoros and Reynosa were for kidnapping, indicated Renata Viana.

MSF stressed that the increase in mobilizations of foreigners should not imply an increase in violence, but rather “proves the absolute ineffectiveness of the existing policies and mechanisms to protect these populations,” said Camilo Vélez, deputy head of mission, referring to guarantee their access to health, safe transit or international protection.

The report speaks, in addition to “cumulative violence” in kidnapping cases, “such as threats, physical violence, sexual violence, deprivation of sleep and food and water, in addition to reports of extreme physical violence such as acid burns, fractures and stabbings, and they even mention having witnessed homicides.

In Guatemala, the NGO received reports of more than 150 people who returned from Mexico due to the violence suffered there.

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