The Foreign Minister, Erika Mouynes, accompanied by the Vice Foreign Minister, Marta Elida Gordón, toured the community of Canaan Membrillo, in Darién, to learn first-hand about the situation of the entry of the growing flow of migrants arriving in our country from South America. .
This tour took place prior to Mouynes’ participation in the 52nd General Assembly of the Organization of American States (OAS), which is being held this week in Lima.
«I return to these communities in the face of the growing wave of migration that we have been experiencing. I highlight the inter-institutional work that we carry out for the humanitarian attention of migrants. At the next OAS assembly we will highlight the situation we are experiencing in Panama, with the increasing number of migrants entering from Colombia and the need to adopt joint measures and shared responsibility with the speed that the issue requires, today more than never”, declared the Chancellor after her tour.
The minister added that a year and a half ago, Panama managed to internationalize the country’s situation in the face of an unprecedented increase in Haitian migrants, most of whom came from Chile. “We managed to successfully attend to and control (the situation) by coordinating regional diplomatic efforts. Today we are facing a new increase, this time due to a Venezuelan migration that crosses Colombia and seeks to reach the US. Once again it is necessary to act firmly, involving all the actors, in search of regional solutions with a humanitarian approach”, she added.
The migrants exposed before the minister the multiple testimonies of their journey; while she visited the reception and boarding points and warned once again of the difficult situation they are experiencing on their journey.
Panama, Mouynes stressed, continues to be the only country of transit for this migration to the north that offers accommodation, food and medical care, in addition to applying biometric identification tests, as an element of additional value for national and regional security. .
As a result of this visit and in the framework of his intervention at the OAS ministerial coordination meeting on the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection, in which Panama will participate in the Group to Prevent Human Trafficking and Smuggling , Minister Mouynes will raise the need to stabilize the communities from which irregular migration comes as a measure to mitigate this growing phenomenon.
In Lima, Foreign Minister Mouynes plans a meeting with Foreign Minister Álvaro Leyva, from Colombia, which Foreign Minister Arnoldo Tinoco, from Costa Rica, will also attend, to propose a comprehensive management approach to this new increase in the migratory flow.
