445% increase of children crossing the Darién jungle

The Colombian Ombudsman’s Office warned  Tuesday, August 15, of a 445% increase in the migration of children and adolescents through the Darién region in the first half of this year, when more than 40,000 minors crossed compared to the 7,000 who crossed in the same period of the previous year.

In the first six months of 2023, “the number of migrants crossing the border with Panama through the Darién region increased exponentially,” facing serious risks of rights violations, according to the Ombudsman’s Office.

Between January and June, 196,371 migrants (Venezuelan, Haitian, Ecuadorian, Chinese, and Indian, mainly) susceptible to refugee status and in need of international protection crossed the border between Colombia and Panama. The figure is 287% higher than that of the same period last year, when 49,452 people did so, according to the Ombudsman.

Increased risk 
Between January and June, 40,171 minors migrated through this dangerous jungle, while in the same period of 2022, 7,369 crossed it, to which is added a “more worrying” figure, children migrating without their families, which generates a greater condition of vulnerability, This concern extends to the possibility that minors are victims of “different forms of violence, including sexual violence, as well as theft, human trafficking and migrant smuggling, and discrimination. “Violence that is carried out by the illegal structures that commit crimes in these irregular places of transit,” said the Colombian Ombudsman, Carlos Camargo. asked the Government of Colombia,  to increase attention in transit zones and verification of the rights of minors.

The figures disclosed by Camargo are taken from the National Border Service (Senafront) of Panama, since in Colombia there are no official records that allow establishing the number of migrants that cross Darién and the conditions in which they do so.