October 23 |

Latin American countries participating in the Palenque Summit on migration, held this Sunday in the Mexican state of Chiapas (southwest), agreed to develop and implement an action plan for development to address the structural causes of migration in the region.

The meeting was attended by leaders and high-level representatives from Belize, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Panama and Venezuela.

Mexico’s Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Alicia Bárcena, read the communiqué-declaration of the “Palenque Meeting: for a fraternal neighborhood with well-being”, which defined that the main causes of the growing irregular migratory flow faced by the region are structural and of economic, political and social origin, in addition to factors linked to climate change.

The participants considered that the current exodus is also caused by external factors, such as unilateral restrictive measures of a criminal nature applied by third countries, which affect entire communities and, to a greater extent, the most vulnerable population groups.

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In addition, they warned of the need to address irregular migration from a human rights (HR) perspective, in order to address its structural causes and regulate migratory flows jointly.

In light of this diagnosis, the heads of state and high-level representatives of the 11 countries agreed to develop a development action plan to address the structural causes of irregular migration in the region, which will be based on priority objectives and an understanding of the realities of each country.

Priority areas were defined as: food production and recovery of the agricultural sector, environmental preservation, employment generation, energy security (including migration to clean energy and decarbonization processes), health self-sufficiency, intra-regional trade and investment, and combating organized crime, corruption and human trafficking.

The heads of state and government, as well as high-level representatives attending Chiapas, urged an end to unilateral coercive measures and emphasized that they are contrary to international law.

The plan of action included the promotion of intra-regional trade and preferential tariffs for basic goods and services; the call for countries of origin, transit and destination to respect the right to migrate, safeguard the lives of migrants and create regularization options; and a call for destination countries to adopt migration policies in line with the regional reality and abandon selective policies, such as those that allow the regularization of certain nationalities.

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It also called for a decisive contribution to Haiti’s sustainable development, the reestablishment of its human security environment and the normalization of its economic, political and social situation.

Other actions that make up this plan are to propose in a coordinated manner that the international financial debt architecture be rethought so that lower income countries achieve a higher level of development and reduce the intention to emigrate, and to request destination countries to expand regular, orderly and safe channels for emigration, with an emphasis on labor migration.

The participants in the Palenque Summit agreed to hold dialogues at the highest level on these issues through a working group to be created by the Ministries of Foreign Affairs. It was made clear that these agreements will be linked to the High Level Meeting on Migration and Development in Latin America and the Caribbean, proposed by Colombia and Mexico, which will take place in the first quarter of 2024.

In addition, they proposed to the governments of Cuba and the United States to hold a comprehensive dialogue on their bilateral relations as soon as possible.

Referring to the meeting, the President of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, recalled that the country has faced more than 930 unilateral coercive measures and that during the “Palenque Meeting: for a fraternal neighborhood with well-being” it was demanded that the U.S. and other nations put an end to them.

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He expressed that Venezuela will fully support the approved action plan. He highlighted the unity expressed by the participants to adopt a development model and their own path that would result in integration, as the Liberator Simón Bolívar would have wished.