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Latin America & The Caribbean Weekly Situation Update (5 - 11 September) as of 12 September 2022

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CENTRAL AMERICA & MEXICO: MIGRANTS & REFUGEES

KEY FIGURES

  • 1.8M APPREHENSIONS MADE BY US BORDER PATROL BETWEEN 1 OCTOBER 2021 AND 31 JULY 2022

  • 40% OF MIGRANTS APPREHENDED ORIGINATE FROM COUNTRIES OUTSIDE MEXICO AND NORTHERN CENTRAL AMERICA

In recent years, the size and demographic composition of migration flows in the region have drastically changed, shifting from mainly crossborder movements originating from Mexico and northern Central America to record numbers of Colombians, Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans attempting to reach the US-Mexico border. In the 2019 fiscal year, US Border Patrol’s apprehensions of migrants from countries beyond Mexico and northern Central America stood at 9 per cent, a figure that jumped to 22 per cent in 2021 and reached a staggering 40 per cent in 2022.

The current surge in migration is overwhelming countries’ reception capacities and fueling an unprecedented rise humanitarian and protection needs. According to Costa Rican officials, the country has more than 200,000 pending asylum applications and another 50,000 people waiting for an appointment to make a formal request, with Nicaraguans accounting for nearly 9 out of every 10 applicants. According to NGO HIAS, before the surge in migration from Nicaragua during recent years, Costa Rica received around 5,000 asylum requests per year, a figure the country now receives in a month.

Delays in asylum processes continue to push a growing number of Nicaraguans north toward Mexico and the United States, where a migration crisis at the border is reaching its tipping point on the heels of a record-setting 1.8 million detentions made by US Border Patrol between 1 October 2021 and 31 July 2022. In the first ten months of the 2022 fiscal year, US border officials encountered Nicaraguan nationals 134,000 times, already surpassing the 50,000 encounters for all of 2021.

In Cuba, people have been leaving the country in the largest numbers seen in more than four decades. Between January and July 2022, US border officials stopped Cuban nationals attempting to enter the country through Mexico 155,000 times, a more than six-fold increase compared to the same period in 2021. From October 2021 to August 2022, the US Coast Guard intercepted more than 4,600 Cubans, nearly six times more than the entire previous fiscal year.

MEXICO: HURRICANE KAY

KEY FIGURES

2.6K PEOPLE RECEIVED ASSISTANCE FROM MEXICO’S CIVIL PROTECTION ACROSS BAJA CALIFORNIA

On 8 September, Hurricane Kay made landfall in the municipality of Mulegé in the state of Baja California Sur as a Category 1 storm, unleashing powerful floods before quickly weakening into a post-tropical cyclone the next day.
Just three days earlier, on 5 September, while still a tropical storm off Mexico’s Pacific coast, Kay left three people dead in the south-western state of Guerrero.

As Hurricane Kay – the Pacific’s 8th hurricane this year – closed in on the Baja California Peninsula, Mexican civil protection authorities preemptively evacuated some 2,000 people from high-risk areas mainly in Mulegé, where more than 32,000 people were left without electricity following Kay’s passage.

The states of Baja California Sur, Coahuila, Chihuahua, Sinaloa and Sonora were hardest hit, with driving winds, floods and landslides damaging homes and infrastructure and, in some cases, cutting off access to the worstaffected areas. Local and national authorities quickly mobilized response personnel to deliver humanitarian assistance and carry out rapid assessments of damages and needs.

REGIONAL: HUMAN DEVELOPMENT

KEY FIGURES

0.754 REGIONAL HUMAN DEVELOPMENT INDEX FOR 2021 REPRESENTS A DROP FROM PRE PANDEMIC SCORE

According to the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) recently launched 2021/2022 Human Development Report, Latin America and the Caribbean’s Human Development Index (HDI) – a composite measure of a country’s achievements in health, education and standard of living – has fallen from 0.768 in 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic to 0.754 in 2021, with 1.0 being the highest possible human development score.

Although the region’s HDI remains higher than the global HDI of 0.732, many countries have suffered significant human development setbacks amid multiple overlapping crises in recent years. Still, the report claims that investments in strengthening social protection systems over the past decade helped cushion the initial blow from COVID-19 in some Latin American countries.

Between 2020 and 2021, the report finds that tourism-dependent Caribbean countries suffered the worst losses in human development, including Cuba (-0.017), Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and Suriname (-0.013). Haiti – the only country in the entire region classified as low (<0.550) on the HDI scale – saw its HDI fall to 0.535, which is lower than several SubSaharan African countries, including Côte d’Ivoire, Tanzania and Togo.

In Central America, Costa Rica (-0.007) and Guatemala (-0.008) saw the biggest year-to-year HDI declines, with the latter’s HDI score falling to an eight-year low. In South America, Venezuela´s Human Development Index declined for the 8th consecutive year, hitting an 18-year low of 0.691.

UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs: To learn more about OCHA's activities, please visit https://www.unocha.org/.