Thank you very much for inviting me. I too will be talking about the situation of Central American migrants and refugees. I apologize for the possible overlap between my presentation and the previous one.
The caravan of some 4,000 to 7,000 Honduran asylum seekers currently travelling through Mexico is drawing attention to the desperate need for safety and security among Central Americans. This caravan follows on the footsteps of another caravan of some 700 to 1,000 Central Americans who passed through Mexico in April of this year.
It is estimated that between 250,000 and 400,000 Central American migrants—mostly from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, with a rising number of Nicaraguans—are travelling through Mexico each year in the hope of crossing over to the U.S.A. They travel on foot, cargo trains and buses. While in transit in Mexico, they are at risk of being kidnapped by criminal organizations, robbed, assaulted, raped, extorted by the police or immigration authorities, or mutilated by rapidly passing trains as they try to climb onto or remain on cargo trains.
Poverty in Central America, gang violence, and rising political instability in Nicaragua are among the main reasons for the exodus. In 2017 more than 13,000 homicides were registered in the region. Guatemala registered 32 homicides per 100,000 people, El Salvador 60, and Honduras 42.7. The World Health Organization considers that more than 10 homicides per 100,000 people is an epidemic. These high levels of violence are attributed mainly to youth gangs—maras, as they're called in Spanish—such as MS-13 or Barrio 18, the 18th Street gang. By forcing local businesses to pay protection fees, they reaffirm control over poor urban enclaves and rural areas.
What has been the response of the United States? The U.S. has fortified its borders. As the borders are becoming more difficult to cross, criminal organizations have assumed greater control over the border crossings, charging high smuggling fees and kidnapping and killing those unable to pay them.
What has been the response of Mexico? I'll mention three responses: first, detention and deportation, with approximately 100,000 migrants detained each year; second, some status regularization or amnesty programs, which have had limited success, with only about 10,000 migrants receiving permanent or temporary residence since 2008; and third, providing opportunities for asylum seekers to obtain refugee status.
I will talk a bit more about the third response. At the end of 2017, a number of asylum seekers and refugees from the three Central American countries of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala reached almost 300,000 worldwide, 58% more than in the previous year and 16 times more than at the end of 2011. Most sought asylum in the United States, Mexico, Belize and Costa Rica. In Mexico the number of asylum seekers went up more than tenfold between 2013 and 2017, from a little under 1,300 in 2013 to 14,500 in 2017. Most of the asylum seekers were from these three Central American countries.
The approval rate in Mexico is relatively high. It is between 62% and 64%.
Approximately two-thirds of the completed applications from El Salvador and a little over one-half of completed applications from Honduran asylum seekers received positive decisions and were granted either refugee status or complementary protection status in 2016 and 2017. However, COMAR, which is the Mexican commission for refugee assistance, is significantly understaffed and under-resourced, making it virtually impossible for them to deal with the backlog and the increasing numbers of new applications. Despite the legal requirement that all applications be reviewed in 45 days or less, more than one-half of the 14,500 refugee claims presented in 2017 remained unresolved at the beginning of 2018.
This shortage of personnel severely hampers refugee protection in Mexico. According to one Mexican researcher, whose presentation I had an opportunity to hear about a month ago, officials interviewing asylum claimants, who are rendering decisions, do not have sufficient training or reliable information on the conditions in the home countries to enable them to make fair decisions. The appeals process is flawed. The same people who make original decisions receive the appeal, and in most cases the decision on the appeal reaffirms the original decision.
Asylum seekers who are detained in detention centres are interviewed by COMAR officials by phone, thus denying them a proper hearing. The requirement to render a decision within 45 working days places tremendous pressure on COMAR officials, undermining their ability to adjudicate claims in an impartial manner. Like the previous speaker, I believe there is a great role for Canada to play in engaging and supporting the Mexican asylum process and in offering Central American asylum seekers third country resettlement.