Tegucigalpa, Apr 28 (EFE).- A total of 77,168 irregular migrants bound for the United States have entered Honduras this year, a figure that triples that of the same period in 2022 and shows that the country has become a transit point mandatory for thousands of undocumented.
“We have become a transit country for migrants; However, there is no recognition from the State,” Liliana Reyes, coordinator of the Human Mobility Ombudsman of the National Commissioner for Human Rights in Honduras (Conadeh), told EFE on Friday.
The lack of recognition of the humanitarian crisis due to the massive arrival of migrants “worries” because “there are no measures that the Government can adopt as such,” he said.
The number of migrants who have crossed Honduras this year is a historic figure, more than triple the 22,962 who entered Honduran territory in the same period of 2022, according to data from the National Institute of Migration (INM) consulted by EFE.
The main nationalities of the travelers who crossed Honduras between January 1 and April 23 of this year were citizens of Venezuela (23,238), Haiti (14,304), Ecuador (13,378) and Cuba (4,460). The rest are nationals of more than thirty American, African and Asian countries.
If this rate of entries into the country is maintained, this year could close with the arrival of “more than 200,000 migrants,” said Reyes, who asked the Honduran authorities “to respond to the needs” of these people.
ABUSES BY AUTHORITIES AND CARRIERS
The Honduran government has created Care Centers for Irregular Migrants, but Reyes considers that it is also necessary to promote actions on issues of security and care due to the vulnerability of women, girls and LGBTI people.
In Honduras, according to the expert, migrants suffer many abuses, mainly in the illegal collection of interurban transportation, or from agents of the National Police.
According to Conadeh, migrants are victims of abuses such as “excessive charges for transportation and grocery stores, sale of counterfeit tickets” to enter the country, despite the fact that Honduras approved a legislative decree in 2022 that exonerates the payment of an administrative fine for entering irregularly.
Almost 80% of migrants enter Honduras through the department of El Paraíso, in the eastern part of the country, bordering Nicaragua, where they face “risk situations such as robbery, assaults, and the use of private individuals to transport them on motorcycles or cars charging them excessive amounts of money,” Reyes stressed.
DO NOT PROLONG SUFFERING
According to recommendations of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), Reyes pointed out, Honduras must guarantee fundamental rights to migrants, not penalize the entry of people in transit, provide humanitarian assistance and differentiated care for children, women, people of the sexual diversity, disabled and older adults.
Likewise, make the requirements for entry into the country more flexible and “not lengthen the suffering” of these people in transit, some in “even street conditions, begging in the streets to be able to pay an administrative penalty for irregular entry.”
The migratory phenomenon must be addressed from a “human rights approach,” added the coordinator of the Human Mobility Ombudsman of Conadeh, who assured that migrants “do not bring problems, they bring development.”
Some 16 irregular travelers died in Honduras in 2022, said Reyes, who stressed that Honduras “is responsible for each person who is inside the country and the authorities must guarantee life and personal integrity and not see migration with a security focus ”.
