Bob Rae has seen more than his fair share of distressing scenes as Canada’s special envoy to Myanmar, advising the Trudeau government on the Rohingya crisis.
But he said his visit to Panama’s Darién Gap in late August, to bear witness to the irregular migration crisis unfolding in one of the world’s least accessible places, was particularly heartbreaking.
Darién has become a funnel point for a great migration that is turning into a humanitarian crisis, as hundreds of thousands of people brave raging rivers, robberies, sexual assaults and venomous snakes to try to make their way north toward the United States.
Rae said the increasing number of children and single mothers making the dangerous trek is especially concerning.
Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations was flown into the remote jungle area at the invitation of the Panamanian government to observe the torrent of distressed humanity crossing by foot and small boat from South America to Central America.
Rae said 4,000 people arrived in Panamanian reception areas last Monday. “The numbers have really skyrocketed,” the former Ontario premier said.
In 2019, just 24,000 people made the perilous 100-kilometre jungle crossing, which can take up to 10 days. The flow rose to 250,000 last year, according to UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency, and it expects that this year numbers will rise to 600,000.
To put that in context, just 180,686 irregular migrants arrived in the European Union last year from Africa and Asia.
There are no roads in the region, so irregular migrants either walk across the border from Colombia or hire Indigenous locals to take them in small boats.
Venezuelans and Ecuadorians make up the bulk of migrants, pushed by rising food insecurity, political instability and gang activity.
But Rae said he was shocked to find that there were also people from China, Afghanistan, Syria and Azerbaijan. “It’s become a global industry telling people how to get on El Camino (the northward route) and go all the way up to the U.S. and Canada,” he said. “(Traffickers) feed them misleading information. The countries in the region are only starting to co-operate to find out what is driving this. It’s quite extraordinary.”
He said he talked to a man from Fujian province on China’s southeastern coast who had flown with around 10 others to Quito in Ecuador. “I asked him what he was doing and, through the translator, he said he tried to get in through Mexico, that there is no work in China at the moment and that he wants a better future for his family in the U.S. or Canada,” Rae said.
Social media is full of accounts that suggest the Darién Gap can be crossed easily in a day. The reality is quite different. “It’s very dangerous, the rivers are very fast-flowing and people are dying on the route,” Rae said. The very remoteness of the crossing means there are no reliable records of how many have perished on the way.
A published interview by a worker from the UN’s International Organization for Migration with a recent arrival in Panama detailed a typical journey.
Gabriela left Ecuador with her 15-year-old son, hoping to get to the U.S., having watched a video that said Darién could be crossed in a day.
Ecuador has been plagued by chronic political instability and spiralling crime rates — homicides have quadrupled in two years.
Gabriela said she took the decision to leave to provide for a younger son who has special needs. But she said found herself lost in the mountainous jungle and swampland after losing contact with the group she was travelling with. She was rescued and said she would never do it again. But crossing the Darién Gap is just the beginning. Migrants are attempting to fulfill their American dream, despite being warned that travellers who arrive irregularly in the U.S. will be returned to their country of origin.
Rae said the Panamanians have been keen to move new arrivals to the Costa Rican border, providing buses that have carried over 200,000 people toward their northern neighbour.
Costa Rica has declared a state of emergency along its southern border, as its ability to cope with sanitation and health issues has been swamped.
In the town of Paso Canoas, which straddles the Costa Rican-Panamanian border, makeshift refugee camps have grown up, overwhelming the local community.
Those with US$30 for the bus fare can head north on the Inter-American Highway to Nicaragua.
The rest are stranded in a garbage-strewn camp with only half a dozen bathrooms. There is little in the way of food or shelter. Migrants endure 30-degree heat and daily downpours. The Red Cross is present, providing rudimentary first aid for people with stomach complaints from drinking untreated water on the journey, according to local media accounts.
In April, Colombia, Panama and the U.S. held a trilateral meeting to discuss joint efforts to meet the emerging crisis, including combatting human-smuggling networks and expanding lawful pathways for Colombians, such as temporary work visas.
The continuing flow of migrants, and Panama’s public comments, suggest those efforts have been in vain.
Panama is set to launch a publicity campaign: “Darién is a jungle, not a road” to discourage would-be travellers.
Panamanian officials complain that Colombia continues to “indiscriminately” send migrants their way. Rae said the crisis is increasing tensions in the region.
In August, Costa Rican president Rodrigo Chavez met his American counterpart, Joe Biden, in the White House to discuss legal pathways for some of the hundreds of thousands of refugees who have arrived in his country to move onward to the U.S.
Rae said one of the things Canada can do is to bring together countries in the region to deal with what is an increasingly serious humanitarian situation.
“It’s not about pointing fingers at each other. We have to work together,” he said.
“Obviously along the route, we donate to the Red Cross and others who are helping, but we have to encourage everyone to create a policy that will deal with this together. Each government on their own gets desperate — the Panamanians were talking last week about closing the border. Well, it’s not physically possible to close the border. But there’s a lot of agitation and people are getting angry.”
Multicultural Meanderings 