Seven-fold increase in migrant children taking dangerous jungle route through Central America, UN reports

More than 4,000 children - half under six years old - crossed Darien Gap last year

Migrants who have made it through the Darien Gap wait in a refugee camp in Panama (AFP via Getty Images)

The number of migrant children taking a dangerous jungle-route through central America in hopes of reaching the United States has rocketed seven-fold in the last year, UNICEF has warned.

In 2018 only 522 children were recorded crossing the Darien Gap, a thickly forested and mountainous region between 60 and 100 miles long which separates Colombia from Panama.

But last year that figure had shot up to about 4,000, UNICEF said on Friday, a seven-fold increase.

The children who made the perilous journey hailed from more than 50 different countries and half were under six years old.

“The dramatic increase in the number of migrant children moving through the Darien Gap underscores the urgent need for action to protect these children and ensure their access to essential services such as healthcare, water and hygiene,” said the UNICEF representative for Panama, Kyungsun Kim.

The long route by foot from South America to the United States’s southern border has become increasingly popular in recent years.

Because of its relatively liberal visa regime, many migrants from Africa fly into Ecuador first, and then attempt to trek north all the way through to Mexico and hopefully on to America.

But to complete this difficult journey, asylum-seekers must traverse the Darien Gap.

This relatively small region links North and South America but has proved for centuries a bottleneck for travel thanks to its difficult terrain.

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Even the Pan-American Highway, which runs from Alaska’s northern shores all the way down to the southern tip of Argentina has a 60-mile break between Panama and Colombia as it has not proven possible to drive the motorway through the Darien Gap.

As well as the ferociously challenging jungles, swamps and rivers, the Gap is also home to drug traffickers and armed gangs who prey on vulnerable migrants.

One Cameroonian refugee who fled government persecution in his homeland told the AP news agency he had spent six days trekking through the Darien jungle on the long walk north from Ecuador to Mexico.

As well as running out of food during the walk, he saw friends washed away by surging rivers and was robbed by assailants who took watches, phones, and cash from the group he was in. They also raped some of the women travelling with him.

The thick jungle which covers much of the Darien Gap makes it dangerous for migrants to cross (iStock)

UNICEF said it was vital governments in the region stepped up their efforts to provide to protect the rights of the growing number of children on the move.

The agency said they had already introduced health checks for arriving migrants in Panama and was providing clean drinking water, safe sanitation facilities and humanitarian supplies.

With the number of children attempting the Darien Gap crossing expected to rise, UNICEF urged local governments and the international community to tackle the root causes which drove migrants and refugees to make the dangerous journey.

The detention of migrant children and separation of them from their families must also stop immediately, UNICEF said.

However, the route may become more difficult, as Ecuador introduced new visa requirements for several African nations in August. Although the country’s constitution upholds the notion of “universal citizenship”, the foreign affairs minister Jose Valencia told a local newspaper Ecuador could not have a regime which was so open it left the nation vulnerable to “threats”.

This is believed to be a veiled reference to the Trump administration, which has been pressurising its Latin American neighbours to crack down on onward migration towards the US.

Last month, after the Ecuadorian president Lenin Moreno visited the White House, Donald Trump dangled the possibility of a trade deal between the two countries.