The immigration policies of the United States have been “very harsh” and “very severe,” so it now has to seek humanitarian responses to this crisis, said Esmeralda Arosemena de Troitiño, commissioner and vice president of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). , in an interview with EFE in Mexico.
“The immigration policies of the United States have been very harsh, very severe and I believe that the United States has to take part, as part of America, in the search for humanitarian responses that are real, possible and necessary,” said the international official. who is also rapporteur for Mexico for the IACHR.
Arosemena de Troitiño considered that the migration crisis currently being experienced in the region responds to a long time ago, where there was talk of the “American dream”, in which it was assured that the United States “was the best” and that had consequences.
A crisis in the region
The Panamanian lawyer pointed out that the current migration situation in the region has resulted in people who have to leave their countries being affected in all their human rights, especially girls, boys and adolescents.
“It is the most vulnerable group because absolutely all of their rights are violated. It is not only the protection of their life and their integrity, it is their development, their happiness, to play, they do not have anything that a child needs precisely in their development and it is not taken into account,” he said.
His statements come after the International Organization for Migration (IOM) warned this week of an “unprecedented increase in migrants in Central America and Mexico.”
The commissioner of the IACHR assured that this is a crisis that requires a regional vision, attacking the root causes, recognizing why people leave their country and addressing it.
“Haiti is not going to take care of this alone, but Mexico is not going to take care of it alone, Panama is not going to take care of it alone, that is why this vision of commitment,” he said.
He expressed that just as one day it was decided to create an organization for the American States, now they must join forces to confront the migratory flow.
“(It is) a call to this political will, because it is still a political will of the States, for a new American commitment, to address migration and not to say: ‘well, in America they die like animals on the way of their migration’, we must not allow that as a region, as America,” he noted.
He insisted that this is not a problem of a single nation, “it is not even the problem of the country of origin, it is not the problem of the country of transit, it is not the problem of the country of destination and it is not the problem of the country of return.”
“But all of these countries are involved, but the others that are not part of these four also have to have this vision of humanity to address it,” he remarked.
Work together
For the IACHR rapporteur, the main challenge in migration and human rights is to recognize each of the crises and have an articulated and serious vision of the problems.
In addition, he said, seek international support to work together, in addition to the responsibility of civil society to work to guarantee the human rights of all people, especially in periods of government transition such as the one Mexico is about to experience.
“Civil society has an important role in working in this transition period so that things do not come to a standstill (…) and if there is a transition or there are changes, that the things that have been evaluated as necessary to do are not interrupted, they continue, they adapt, but not that they are suspended,” he concluded.
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