MEXICO CITY (CN) — Heads of state and other high-ranking officials from Mexico and 11 Latin American countries will meet in Palenque, Chiapas, on Sunday to discuss migration and responses to its root causes.
Organized by Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the summit is titled “For a fraternal neighborhood and well-being.” Attendees “will seek to expand safe, orderly and regular pathways of human mobility with a humanist vision and a focus on development,” according to a press release issued by Mexico’s Foreign Relations Secretariat on Friday.
The heads of state of Colombia, Cuba, Haiti, Honduras and Venezuela had confirmed their attendance as of Friday afternoon. The vice president of El Salvador and vice premier of Belize will attend, as will high-ranking officials from Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala and Panama.
Leaders at the summit “will analyze the causes of human mobility, like poverty, inequality, lack of work opportunities and the negative effects of climate change, as well as external unilateral measures that cause this social phenomenon in vulnerable populations,” the press release said.
“We must deal with the causes, we must go to the heart of the matter,” López Obrador said during a press conference this week. “We have to make sure that people — who out of necessity set out to make a living — can, in their places of origin, if they are cared for, if there are opportunities, stay with their families, in their towns, maintain their customs, their traditions, and not take risks.”
The summit comes in the wake of the third annual High-Level Security Dialogue between U.S. and Mexican officials, which took place this month. Participants in those talks discussed migration for the first time, after not considering the issue to relate to security during the first two meetings.
The United States has long said that Latin American countries must do more to address their part of the “shared responsibility” for the problem of mass migration to the north.
Sunday’s summit will be a chance for these countries to forge a united front against U.S. pressure on the region, according to Eunice Rendón, coordinator of the Mexico City-based migrant advocacy group Agenda Migrante.
“I don’t think they’ll agree to anything that the United States would oppose, but it’s important that they ask or demand that the United States also put resources in the region,” she said in a phone interview. “Right now, it’s good for there to at least be some organization among the countries in the region.”
The human rights organization Amnesty International on Friday published an open letter to summit attendees with recommendations on how to keep human rights in mind as they negotiate.
“The organization believes that any response to the hundreds of thousands of women, men and children who are displaced must be framed in the full respect for international human rights and refugee law,” the letter said.
The recommendations include a guarantee of migrants’ right to request asylum, a guarantee of non-refoulement, which is the promise not to return migrants to situations in which they will likely be subjected to persecution, and the strengthening of asylum systems, among others.
The letter also pointed out several record-breaking statistics that highlight the magnitude of the problem. Mexico’s refugee commission Comar received over 12,500 asylum requests each month in from January to September of this year, and a record number of migrants — 250,000 — passed through the Darién Gap between Colombia and Panama in the first half of the year.
The organization urged participant countries to implement migration policies that respect the human rights of migrants and to take measures to end discrimination toward migrants.
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