Tegucigalpa.- More than 128,000 Honduran children and minors under 18 have been deported or returned, mostly from the U.S. between 2014 and August 31st, according to the executive director of the Coordinator of Private Institutions for Girls, Boys, Adolescents, Young People and their Rights (COIPRODEN), Wilmer Vásquez, reported this Wednesday.
“That means there are thousands who may be in transit countries, who may be on the borders, who may have reached the destination country, others who may be in detention centers,” Vásquez, one of the panelists who participated in the ‘International Migration Forum, Challenges and Opportunities: Routes and answers?’ told EFE. He added that some of the deported or returned minors “have had their rights violated with sexual abuse, exploitation, trafficking, labor slavery” and that “many have lost a limb and there are many who have simply disappeared.”Vásquez explained that different civil society organizations working on the promotion, protection, and defense of human rights and, particularly migration, convened the international forum to analyze the situation in the country, taking into account that migration has become a phenomenon where hundreds of thousands of Hondurans have decided to take the migratory route over the last decades. In the forum, an assessment was made of “the social inequality that places us as the most unequal country in Latin America and this leads us to extreme poverty and social exclusion”, stated the head of COIPRODEN. You can also read: Trump admits impact of deported migrants on agriculture He also pointed out that they have had little contact with the five presidential candidates who will participate in the general elections on November 30 to find out if they have included the issue of migrants in their proposals, but that as civil society they are building a strategy to be able to influence each of the political parties. The idea is that issues related to the violation of human rights of migrants can be included in the government plans of presidential candidates.“This is the reality we need to discuss with Honduran society so that we can build strategies that allow not only to prevent people from leaving the national territory, but also what is the follow-up, what is the responsibility of the institutions, what civil society does, how international cooperation cooperates to ensure that those who have been deported to Honduras can be fully protected from the responsibility of public institutions,” he underlined.
“Y para eso vamos a elaborar documentos importantes que pueden ser integrados en el plan de gobierno, si es que el partido político y quien está al frente de la candidatura se siente identificado con estas problemáticas que enfrenta el Estado hondureño, sobre todo pensando que esta es una tarea pendiente y una deuda histórica que tiene el Estado hondureño”,
enfatizó Vásquez.
“The issue of human trafficking remains a huge concern for Honduran society. In the last four years, we have had more than 2,222 adolescents and young people between 0 and 30 years of age who have lost their lives violently and between 15,000 and 18,000 girls and boys living on the streets in Honduras; therefore, this violation of rights remains a pending task where the response and responsibility must be assumed together by all Honduran society,” said Vásquez.
