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Spurred by violence, instability, poverty and climate-related events, children are migrating through Latin America and the Caribbean in record numbers, a UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) official said on Thursday.
“Gang violence, instability, poverty and climate-related events are, alarmingly, gripping the region and pushing more children from their homes,” said UNICEF Latin America and the Caribbean director Garry Conille. “More and more children are on the move, of an increasingly young age, often alone and from diverse countries of origin, including from as far away as Africa and Asia.”
A UNICEF press release quoted Conille as saying that when the children cross several countries, and sometimes the entire region, disease and injury, family separation and abuse may plague their journeys. Even if they reach their destination, their futures often remain at risk.
UNICEF said record numbers of children move via three major migration routes in Latin America and the Caribbean: through the treacherous Darien jungle between Colombia and Panama, outward migration from South America, and at key transit points in northern Central America and Mexico.
According to the UN agency, the nature of migration in Latin America and the Caribbean region has changed dramatically in the last decade.
At least 29,000 children made the perilous Darien crossing in 2021, UNICEF said, adding that an estimated 40,000 children made the crossing in 2022 and more than 60,000 children crossed the Darien jungle in the first eight months of 2023.
The increase in child migration is reflected in the increased number of refugee and migrant children apprehended at the southern border of the United States.
Conille told reporters in a briefing that the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency recorded more than 149,000 children crossing in fiscal year 2021 and more than 155,000 in fiscal year 2022. In the first seven months of fiscal year 2023, more than 83,000 children entered the United States from across the southern border.
The U.S. fiscal year runs from October 1 to September 30.
UNICEF said the proportion of children moving along major migration routes in Latin America and the Caribbean hit a record high in the past three years. Globally, children comprise 13 percent of the migrant population, but in this region, about one in four people on the move is a child, up from 19 percent in 2019.
The agency said the figures are only rivaled by Sub-Saharan Africa, where children account for 25 percent of the migrant population.
“Increasingly, it is younger children who are making these perilous journeys, with those under 11 years now accounting for up to 91 percent of all children on the move at some key transit points,” UNICEF said. “This new reality poses challenges to national migration policies and humanitarian responses in countries of origin, transit and destination.”
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