This Tuesday, April 11, Panamanian, Colombian and United States authorities met in Panama City to discuss joint efforts to address one of the region’s most pressing problems: irregular migration.
The meeting was led by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Panama, Janaina Tewaney, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Colombia, Álvaro Leyva Durán, and the US Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro N. Mayorkas.
The American delegation was made up of the Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development, Samantha Power, the Commander of the United States Southern Command, General Laura Richardson, and senior representatives of the entire Administration.
The heads of delegation reaffirmed and expressed their commitment to the road map established in the joint communiqué of February 14 of this year in Apartadó, Colombia.
In the document they express that they share the responsibility to prevent the risk to human life, disrupt transnational criminal organizations and preserve the vital tropical forest, the governments of Panama, Colombia and the United States intend to carry out a coordinated two-month campaign to deal with the grave humanitarian situation in Darien.
The Darien is one of these regional challenges. Each year, tens of thousands of migrants attempt to cross the Panama-Colombia border, placing their lives in the hands of smugglers, and many perish trying to cross the treacherous terrain.
Through this coordinated 60-day campaign and sustained cooperation, the three governments will seek to achieve the following ambitious goals:
- End the illicit movement of people and goods through the Darién, through both land and sea corridors, which leads to the death and exploitation of vulnerable people for significant profits.
- Open new legal and flexible pathways for tens of thousands of migrants and refugees as an alternative to irregular migration.
- Implement a plan to reduce poverty, improve the provision of public services, create employment and promote economic and sustainable opportunities in the border communities of northern Colombia and southern Panama, through international alliances between financial institutions, society civilian and the private sector.
This trilateral meeting serves as a call to action for the entire region to come together to tackle irregular migration, in the spirit of the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection.
