The President of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, assured this Saturday that the migration crisis affecting his country due to the massive migration of people through the Darién Gorge, on the border with Panama, began with an “economic bloc”.
“In the case of migration, it was the economic blockade that triggered a series of waves of population exodus, first from Venezuela to Colombia,” the president said in a joint statement with his Mexican counterpart Andrés Manuel López Obrador in California.
This is not the first time that Petro has referred to this blockade, as this week he assured that the only way to resolve the humanitarian crisis on the migration route through the Darién, the jungle border that separates his country and Panama, is to do so The aim is to “remove the blockade economically”. to Venezuela.”
For this reason, he declared this Saturday that the migration crisis is an “American problem” that began with “hundreds” passing through Darién, today it is “thousands a day: 3,000 pass a day with boys and girls; They will be 6,000 when they arrive in Mexico, and they will be 7,000 when they arrive at the border with the United States every day.”
“The problem started with a blockage. And I think that in the relatively short term, since the problems will worsen as the climate crisis continues, they could be solved if the blockade is lifted,” Petro said.
He described this blockade as an unwise policy that is “conceived with a single intention and ends up hitting the person who made the policy on the head.”
Crisis on the border between Colombia and Panama
There is a humanitarian crisis in Darién, as more than 330,000 people have made this journey so far this year, facing natural hazards as well as robbery and rape.
Compared to the 248,000 people in 2022, this is the highest annual figure ever recorded.
This situation is described by humanitarian organizations as overwhelming, as they do not have the resources and means to care for people arriving on the other side of the border.
Just on Tuesday, the UN human rights office expressed concern about the “multiple violations and abuses” migrants face while crossing the Darien Gap.
Although nationals of South American countries, particularly Venezuelans, and the Caribbean make up the majority of migrants, undocumented immigrants from more than fifty nations of the world arrive in Darién through transnational networks and after passing through several southern countries.
