The undersigned organizations are joining in expressing their alarm and concern for the serious violations of the fundamental rights of children and adolescents detained at the southern border of the United States of America. They demand the U.S. government adopt a migration policy committed to the respect of human rights. They also demand the governments of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras put effective policies in place for reversing the structural causes of migration.

The policy known as “Zero Tolerance” for illegal border crossers, approved in an April 6, 2018 memorandum issued by U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions,[1] has shown to be an aggressive measure in violation of fundamental human rights. As Attorney General Sessions stated in his May 7, 2018 press conference,[2] this policy enables U.S. authorities to criminally prosecute all migrants, explicitly referring to the separation of children from their accompanying adults.

At June 2018, news media documented and reported that the practical implementation of this zero-tolerance policy effectively included separating and detaining children and adolescents; they included pictures of children being treated as criminals, incarcerated under conditions that flagrantly violated their dignity and human rights. Although the exact number of families separated as a result of this policy is unknown, the media report that at least 2,700 families have been affected,[3] while the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has informed the U.S. Senate that 2,342 children were detained between May 6 and June 19, 2018, and that they are being held in more than 100 detention centers located in 17 states.[4]

Public knowledge of this humanitarian crisis has triggered a global wave of indignation and condemnation, which surely affected President Donald Trump’s decision to issue an executive order on June 20, 2018,[5] redefining the way the zero-tolerance policy should be implemented, in the sense that the U.S. government will continue to follow its provisions but will keep migrant families united. The executive order also ordered Attorney General Sessions to modify the “Flores settlement”.[6] The organizations feel that although President Trump’s executive order takes a step towards solving the humanitarian crisis of incarcerated children, it unfortunately still insists on implementing the zero-tolerance policy. They are therefore reiterating their demand that the U.S. government adopt a migration policy that respects human rights, does not criminalize migrants, and guarantees full respect of the rights of children arriving in the U.S., regardless of their legal situation.

The undersigned organizations are also issuing a call to the governments of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, which because of their constitutional mandates and for ethical reasons have primary responsibility for the wellbeing of their migrating citizens. The Central American “Northern Triangle” governments also have primary responsibility for reversing the structural causes of migration, as seen by the fact that these three countries have 18 million people living in poverty, accounting for 80% of poor and 85% of extremely poor in all Central America.

Corruption, justice systems that continue to favor impunity, electoral systems that impede legitimate democracies, and inappropriate fiscal policies that maintain unfair tax structures and privileges while minimizing social welfare resources all contribute to manifestations in the Northern Triangle countries of social crises, notably violence and forced displacement, intensifying human mobility. In 2017, homicide rates per 100,000 inhabitants were 32 for Guatemala, 42.7 for Honduras and 60 for El Salvador – all much too high, in view of the fact that the World Health Organization considers a rate higher than 10 as an epidemic. For the 2010-2015 period, El Salvador ranked among the world’s top in femicides (with a rate of 13.5 for every 100,000 inhabitants), followed by Honduras with 13.4 and Guatemala with 8.2. The international organization, Save the Children, rates Honduras’s homicide rate of children aged 0-19 as the highest in the region with more than 30 per 100,000 inhabitants, followed by El Salvador with upward of 20 and Guatemala with more than 15.

The call to attention of Northern Triangle governments is justified, since their efforts to remedy this are becoming increasingly weaker. According to a study conducted by the Central American Institute for Fiscal Studies (ICEFI) with the support of Plan International, in Honduras per capita daily public spending on children and adolescents dropped from US $0.90 to $0.82 in 2013. During this same period, Guatemala reduced its per capita daily public spending on children and adolescents from US $0.72 to $0.69. By contrast, in this same period Costa Rica increased its per capita daily public spending on children from US $4.15 to $4.91 – nearly six times that of Honduras and far above the US $1.55 per capita daily spent by El Salvador. According to Save the Children’s report, The Many Faces of Exclusion, Guatemala is the worst Latin American country for childhood, ranking 24 on the index of threats to childhood, while Honduras ranked 32 and El Salvador 56. ICEFI, for its part, estimates that some 5.28 million children and adolescents are excluded from the educational system in Central American Northern Triangle countries.

Conditions like this explain why migration is not a criminal act but rather dramatic evidence of human aspirations for security and asylum, survival and the pursuit of dignified living conditions. The undersigned organizations remind the U.S. and Central American Northern Triangle governments that the Alliance for Prosperity in the Northern Triangle (APP) has been promoted since 2014 as a balanced pursuit of conditions that would reverse the structural causes of migration, motivated by the dramatic increase of unaccompanied migrant children detained by the U.S. border patrol.[7] Reality forces us to admit that the APP is not working.  In addition, the organizations feel that measures such as the building of a new, reinforced border wall, cancellation of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), or termination of the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for El Salvador and Honduras will only make the situation worse. [8]

Finally, the undersigned organizations reiterate the need for the U.S. and Northern Triangle governments to work together to build state capacity for reversing the structural causes of migration. This will require comprehensive, inclusive development agendas with sustainable fiscal policies and sufficient public funding for universal protection systems that fight poverty and inequality by promoting, protecting and guaranteeing human rights, especially those of children and adolescents; it will also require economic and social spending to increase production capacity and create jobs, and a sustained fight against corruption and impunity, among other things.

Central America, June 28, 2018

For more information, please contact Juan Pablo Ozaeta at (502) 2505-6363 or (502) 5901-5945 (cell phone) or email him at juanpablo.ozaeta@icefi.org.