Four UN agencies have asked this Thursday to guarantee the Human Rights of Haitian migrants and have urged “not to expel them without having assessed their protection needs”, something that must be guaranteed with the adoption of a “comprehensive regional approach.”
The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights have issued a joint statement in relation to the situation of Haitian migrants, in the spotlight after the United States announced that it was reactivating deportations, something that Mexico has also begun to do.
In this context, the UN agencies have stated that “the complex social, economic, political and humanitarian situation, together with the catastrophes that have hit the country have caused population movements in the Caribbean country in the last decade”, while They recalled that “International Law prohibits collective expulsions and requires the evaluation of each case to identify the need for protection.”
This is because “Haitians on the move in the Americas include people whose profiles, motivations, and protection needs vary, including unaccompanied or separated children from their families, victims of human trafficking, and survivors of violence. of genre.
“Some of these people have well-founded reasons to request international protection as refugees,” the United Nations agencies have recalled, while “others may have different protection needs.”
They have also criticized that “public discourse with discriminatory overtones suggesting that human mobility is a problem fuels racism and xenophobia; therefore, it should be avoided and condemned”, especially in the case of Haiti, where the “situation will worsen as a result of the earthquake that took place on August 14, which will limit the capacity to receive Haitian returnees. “
For this reason, they recalled in a statement, “conditions in Haiti continue to be worrying and not conducive to forced returns,” while violence and insecurity continue to increase, which has caused at least 19,000 people to be displaced in the capital of Port-au-Prince only in the summer of 2021.
Furthermore, “more than 20 percent of children have been victims of sexual violence” and “almost 24 percent of the population – 12.9 percent of whom are girls and boys – live below the extreme poverty line “. Added to this is that around 4.4 million people – almost 46 percent of the population – suffer from food insecurity, including 1.2 million people at emergency levels and 3.2 million of people in crisis levels.
