Sud America

More than 30,000 children have crossed the Darién Gap, the dense expanse of jungle straddling Panama and Colombia, in the first four months of this year.

According to figures released by the United Nations’ children’s agency, Unicef, the number of minors embarking on the dangerous journey is up 40% compared to last year.

Most of them are trying to reach the United States.

Migrants making the jungle crossing are often robbed or extorted by criminal gangs and many have been sexually abused.

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) recorded 214 cases of sexual violence in the Darién jungle in the month of December alone.

The international medical organisation said migrants had described how they had been detained by armed men who had forced them to remove their clothes and sexually abused them.

While MSF said that most victims of sexual violence were women, its teams have also provided treatment to men and children.

Unicef deputy executive director Ted Chaiban said that many children had died “on this arduous, dangerous journey”.

There are no roads through the Darién Gap and crossing it on foot can take a week.

According to Unicef, 2,000 out of the more than 30,000 children who had embarked on the journey in the first four months of 2024 did so unaccompanied.

“The Darién Gap is no place for children,” Mr Chaiban said.

Unicef has helped migrant children, providing them with water, sanitation and hygiene as well as health services, but the organisation says it needs more funds to address their most urgent needs.

The large number of migrants through the Darién Gap has become a political issue in Panama, with President-elect José Raúl Mulino saying during his acceptance speech that he will “close” the route.

“This is not a transit route, no, this is our border,” said Mr Mulino, who will be sworn in in July. He did not clarify how he would block the route.

The area planted with coca bushes in Colombia reached a record high last year, an annual report to the UN says.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said that potential coca production had risen by 24% since 2021.

Coca leaves are the key ingredient in cocaine and Colombia has long been the top producer of the illegal drug.

The area planted with coca bushes rose by 13%, and the biggest increase was recorded in Colombia’s border areas.

Almost two-thirds of the coca crops are found in the provinces of Nariño and Putumayo, which border Ecuador, and in Norte de Santander, on the Venezuelan border.

There has been a 77% rise in in coca cultivation in Putumayo, which shares a border with Peru and Ecuador.

Candice Welsch, UNODC’s regional director, said that it was “worrying that each year there is an increase in coca crops in the country”.

Colombian Justice Minister Néstor Osuna said that his country was “flattening the curve” and that the rate of increase was much lower than in 2021.

The UNODC’s Leonardo Correa however warned that there had been a sharp rise in potential coca production in 2022.

“The crops that were young last year have now reached maturity and are now productive. In other words, the rate of growth in hectares is decreasing. But the rate of cocaine production is increasing,” he said.

Both the size of the area planted with coca in Colombia and the potential coca production are at their highest since the UN began monitoring in 2001.

Colombia is the top coca cultivator in the world, producing 60% of the world’s cocaine, followed by Peru and Bolivia.

President Gustavo Petro on Saturday appealed to his regional counterparts to turn away from a militarised approach to fighting drug use and instead see it as a public health issue.

“It is time to rebuild hope and not repeat the bloody and ferocious wars, the ill-named ‘war on drugs’, viewing drugs as a military problem and not as a health problem for society,” he said at the Latin American and Caribbean Conference on Drugs in Cali.

His Mexican counterpart, Andrés Manuel López Obrador said it was key to “fight first and foremost against poverty and inequality, and to offer work and good salaries”.

He said growers needed to be convinced “to switch from sowing marijuana, poppies and coca to planting beans, corn, cocoa and fruit trees”.

Mexico is the base for some of the most powerful transnational drug cartels that control trafficking routes from South America to the United States and Europe.

It also produces large amounts of heroin, cannabis, methamphetamine and synthetic opioids such as fentanyl.

El Salvador’s parliament has approved a state of emergency after the Central American country recorded dozens of gang-related murders in a single day.

Police said there had been 62 murders on Saturday, making it the most violent 24-hour period since the end of the civil war in 1992.

New laws restrict the right to gather, allow arrests without a warrant and the monitoring of communications.

Last year, the gang-plagued nation recorded 1,140 murders – a 30-year low.

However, that still equates to 18 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants. In November, another spate of violence led to more than 40 people being killed within three days.

Hours before MPs voted on the new powers, which will remain in place for 30 days, police said four leaders of the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) gang had been arrested over the spate of killings.

President Nayib Bukele, elected in 2019 on promises to fight organised crime and improve security, said: “We have had a new spike in homicides, something that we had worked so hard to reduce.

“While we fight criminals in the streets, we must try to figure out what is happening and who is financing this.”

The country “must let the agents and soldiers do their job and must defend them from the accusations of those who protect the gang members”, he added, in the statement tweeted by Congress president Ernesto Castro.

However, Juan Pappier, from the international campaign group Human Rights Watch, tweeted the measures were “very worrying, especially in a country where there are no independent democratic institutions”.

Authorities say the MS-13 and Barrio-18 gangs, among others, number about 70,000 members and are responsible for homicides, extortion and drug-trafficking.

Police said the latest bloodshed had left 12 people dead in the central department of La Libertad, as well as nine each in the capital, San Salvador, and the western department of Ahuachapan, with the other killings spread around the country.

In April 2020, as coronavirus swept through the country, President Bukele imposed a 24/7 lockdown for imprisoned gang members after more than 50 people were killed in three days.

He argued that many of the murders were ordered from behind bars and said prisoners belonging to rival gangs would be made to share cells in a bid to break up lines of communication.