A 16-year-old Guatemalan migrant heading to the U.S. Credit: Wilfredo Díaz/IPS

By Diana Cariboni
MONTEVIDEO, Aug 29 2014 (IPS)

“Survival migration” is not a reality show, but an accurate description of human mobility fuelled by desperation and fear. How despairing are these migrant contingents? Look at the figures of Central American children travelling alone, which are growing.

The painful journeys of children and teenagers from Central America to the United States border sounded alarms this year.While Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and parts of Mexico are like hell on Earth, the Refugee Convention is not easily applicable in these cases, and moves to broaden or amend it have failed so far.

More than 52,000 children —mostly from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador— were detained when they crossed the border without their parents in the last eight months, says the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA).

While it is an unprecedented crisis, Gervais Appave, special policy adviser to the International Organisation for Migration’s director general, frames it “within a more general global trend”, which could be defined as “survival migration”.

Children travelling from the Horn of Africa to European countries, through Malta and Italy, or seeking to reach Australia by boat from Afghanistan, Iran and Sri Lanka, are just two examples.

The European agency dealing with borders, Frontex, reported an increase in the “phenomenon of unaccompanied minors claiming asylum in the European Union (EU)” during 2009 and 2010.

According to Frontex, the proportion of children migrating alone “in the overall number of irregular migrants that reach the EU is worryingly growing.”

Appave told IPS it is impossible to identify a single cause for the spread of this child migration. But he pointed out there is a “very effective and ruthless smuggling industry”. There is “a psychological process that kicks in if you have a critical mass of people moving. Then others will try to follow because this is seeing as ‘the’ solution to go forth,” he said.

The muscle of smugglers and traffickers is apparent in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. But nobody flees without a powerful reason.

According to a report published in July by the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR, 85 percent of the new asylum applications received by the United States in 2012 came from these three countries, while Mexico, Panama, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Belize registered a combined 435 percent increase in the number of individual applications from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.

While in recent weeks there have been fewer children crossing the U.S. southern border, “this phenomenon has been here since years ago,” Adriana Beltrán, WOLA’s senior associate for citizen security, told IPS.

Criminal gangs, mafias and corruption are major drivers, agree Beltrán and José Guadalupe Ruelas, director of Casa Alianza – Honduras, an NGO working to promote children’s rights.

Killings, extrajudicial executions, extortion and fear “have grown dramatically” in Honduras, Ruelas told IPS.

The country has 3.7 million children under 18, and one million do not attend school; half million suffer labour exploitation; 24 out of 100 teenage girls get pregnant; 8,000 boys and girls are homeless, and other 15,000 fled the country this year, according to official statistics.

“Five years ago, there were 43 monthly murders and arbitrary executions of children and under-23 youths,” he said. Now the monthly average is 88, according to Casa Alianza’s Observatorio de Derechos de los Niños, Niñas y Jóvenes.

Moreover, the perception of security is altered. When people in the “colonias” (poor neighbourhoods) see an ambulance, they “immediately presume a murder or a violent death, instead of a life about to be saved or an ill person to be cured,” and if they see a police or a military patrol, “they think there will be heavy fire and deaths.”

These terrified people mistrust state institutions. Only last year, 17,000 families left their homes following gangs’ threats, “and the state could do nothing to prevent it.”

“They are displaced by the war,” Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández said in June.

The 1951 U.N. Convention on the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol establish that a refugee is a person who fled his or her country due to persecution on the grounds of political opinion, race, nationality or membership to a particular social group.

While Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and parts of Mexico are like hell on Earth, the Convention is not easily applicable in these cases, and moves to broaden or amend it have failed so far. Instead, the 1984 Cartagena Declaration (see sidebar) offers a more flexible refugee definition for the region.

Through a 10-point plan of action, the UNHCR asks governments to include refugee considerations in migration policies, particularly when dealing with children, women and victims of trafficking.

According to a 2008 law, U.S. authorities must screen all cases of children under 18 who crossed the border alone to determine whether they are victims of trafficking or abuse, to provide them with legal representation and ensure due process. But the agencies in charge are overloaded and lack adequate resources.

“Some sectors want to change this law and, despite the fact that there have not been deportations, Washington has not clearly indicated yet which stance will take,” said Ruelas.

With elections set for November, it is highly unlikely the political parties will keep this issue out of the electoral fight, he added.

Beyond the urgency of this refugee crisis, underlying causes are a much more complicated issue.

It is not just violence or poverty, but “incredibly weak criminal justice institutions penetrated by organised crime,” said Beltrán.

Ruelas points out the “wrongful” militarisation of Honduras, which will further erode the state’s ability to control its territory. “Despite more soldiers patrolling the streets, criminals feel free to threaten and murder in the colonias,” he said.

According to Beltrán, the United States’ ad hoc assistance through the Central America Regional Security Initiative (CARSI) is excessively focused on the “anti-drug fight”, when the region requires more investment in prevention policies, particularly at the local level.

“Washington needs to refocus its policies toward the region, but Central American governments can’t evade their own responsibility,” she added.

Their fiscal revenues, for example, are among the lowest in Latin America, thus undermining their capacity to provide services and respect human rights.

However, the crisis of migrant children is providing a golden opportunity to reexamine all of these larger issues, Ruelas says. “We need a human security, one which regains the public space for the citizens.

“When people control the territory,” he argued, “because the police protect and support them, they gain the chance to rebuild a more peaceful community life.”

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at dia.cariboni@gmail.com

The presidents of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador speak at the Organisation of American States on Jul. 24, 2014 in Washington, DC. Credit: Juan Manuel Herrera/OAS

By Julia Hotz
WASHINGTON, Jul 25 2014 (IPS)

As the presidents of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala prepare to meet with President Barack Obama Friday, more than 40 organisations issued a petition urging U.S. lawmakers to meet their “moral and legal obligations” by providing emergency aid to Central American children and families.

The petition, spearheaded by the Washington Office of Latin America (WOLA), an advocacy group here, insists that “more border security will not help,” and is instead calling for the U.S. to provide children and families with “all due [legal] protections” and “face the root causes of violence at the community level.”“What we’d like to see [from Friday’s meeting] is a package of assistance to Central America that is focused entirely on the civilian side of what it takes to protect.” -- Adam Isacson

In the last nine months, more than 50,000 unaccompanied children have crossed the U.S. southern border, and the wave shows no signs of abating. Many are now facing deportation.

Less than 24 hours after WOLA released their petition, a separate batch of legal groups accused the U.S. government of violating both international and domestic law, based on its inspection of the New Mexico-based Artesia Family Detention Facility.

After representatives from 22 organisations interviewed families detained at Artesia, the groups concluded that the U.S. government is violating both their moral responsibility to provide the refugees with physical and mental health support, as well as their legal obligation to guarantee them due process.

“Family detention is always an awful and damaging process, but the conditions at the Artesia Family Detention facility in New Mexico should make every American hang their head in shame,” the groups said in a statement.

“The Administration’s intent to deport everyone as quickly as possible for optics is sacrificing critical due process procedures and sending families – mothers, babies, and children – back despite clear concerns for their safety in violation of US and international law.”

Fixing the roots

While such humanitarian concerns surrounding the Central American migration crisis persist from a variety of sources, top officials from both the U.S. and Central America are considering both long-term and short-term intervention from the top-down.

As a pre-cursor for Friday’s meeting between U.S. President Obama and the Central American presidents, foreign ministers from the three respective nations – collectively known as the “Northern Triangle” – convened on Thursday at the Wilson Center, a think tank here, to discuss the crisis’ roots and debate its solutions.

While all three of the Northern Triangle’s representatives agreed that there was not one cause behind the current crisis, they collectively cited the drug smuggling network, the prevalence of organised crime, and lack of taxpayer dollars as their biggest problems.

As such, the three ministers advocated for “all-encompassing” reform, both to stop the short-term crisis at the border, and to provide economic and educational opportunities- such as universal secondary school coverage- for children and adults alike.

Call for legal protections

While Michelle Brané , director of migrant rights & justice at the Women’s Refugee Commission (WRC), a New York-based advocacy group that participated in Artesia’s inspection, agrees with the Northern Triangle’s conclusion that such a “holistic response…addressing root causes” is necessary, her central issue is with U.S. justice system.

“The problem is that our court system is woefully under-funded,”Brané told IPS, hopefully adding that “we can create a due process system that works,” even if it takes years.

Clarifying that she is “not saying everyone should stay, [but rather] that everyone should have a fair shot at presenting their case,” Brané believes that providing attorneys to represent these migrants and using alternative detention centres, such as shelters and community support programs,  are both more humane and “cost-effective” solutions than the status quo.

Asked about the desired outcome of Friday’s presidential meeting, Brané informed IPS that she would like to see “[the U.S.] take a leadership role in protection, as opposed to a ‘close the borders’ stance and lack of respect for human rights law.”

“This is more than just something that requires them to stem the flow to stop up the borders,” Brané told IPS. ‘It really requires…strengthening protections systems, as opposed to interception.”

Adam Isacson, senior associate for regional security policy at WOLA, echoed Brané’s call for more protections.

“What we’d like to see [from Friday’s meeting] is a package of assistance to Central America that is focused entirely on the civilian side of what it takes to protect,” Isacson told IPS.

While his list of desired protections included “getting police to respect people”, “a much stronger justice system,” and “more emphasis on creating opportunities,” Isacson added that such requests be “combined with Central American presidents’ commitment to raise more taxes from their wealthiest.”

Isacson further agrees with WRC’s Brané in that there is a need for systematic reform of the U.S legal system, calling for “more capacity” and a reduction in the average trial’s wait time, which he believes can be up to two or three years.

Yet others, including the Virginia-based Negative Population Growth (NPG) nonprofits, have expressed different legal concerns.

“Asylum and refugee status is something for specific persecution, and it’s not intended to be a relief measure for general societal strife,” Dave Simcox, senior adviser of NPG, told IPS.

Simcox also told IPS that there is a distinction between being trafficked and being smuggled, and while “a few [migrants] will be able to make the case that they were taken against their will for exploitation,” he ultimately agrees with NPG President Don McCann, who argued in a statement that “granting refugee or temporary protected status on the current wave from Central America would be a disastrous precedent,” and that U.S leaders should instead apply “strong deterrent measures” by “supplementing border forces” with additional personnel and fencing.

But Isacson thinks “judges will get it right much more than border patrol agents on the spot will get it right,” and believes that that providing due process to such migrants is the best way for the U.S. to “enforce its own laws.”

Garifuna children from Honduras relax at one of the shelters on Mexican migration routes. Credit: Courtesy of Migrant rights defenders

By Daniela Pastrana
IRAPUATO, Mexico, Jul 7 2014 (IPS)

In early May, the Irapuato Migrants’ House, in the centre-west Mexican state of Guanajuato, took in a group of 152 Garifuna Afro-Caribbean people from Honduras. Sixty of them were children.

“It was a Sunday,” said Bertha, the cook. “They had children of all ages, from babies on up. They were only here a few hours, they showered, ate and left. They did not talk much. I asked one of the women if these children go to school, and she just said: ‘No, we can’t right now,’ and nothing else,” she told IPS.“It is an appalling bloodletting. Children aged 13-16 are sent straight into sexual exploitation or slave labour, or they are massacred or disappeared, or become hired killers." -- Diego Lorente

Between May and June, this shelter took in over 400 children, mostly from Honduras. They travelled in large groups. Only once did they stay for more than four hours.

“They said very little, they did not tell us how they travelled, although we know they did not come on the train. They wouldn’t say what route they were taking, either,” Guadalupe González, the head of the shelter, told IPS.

Some 1,000 kilometres to the southeast, “La 72” migrants’ shelter in Tenosique, a municipality in the state of Tabasco on the border with Guatemala, is also experiencing a similar trend.

They began to see a marked increase in unaccompanied young migrants aged 14-18, women with small children, and groups of Garifunas, who were previously only occasionally to be found on the migrant route to the United States.

Mexico’s northern border with the U.S. is 3,152 km long, while in the south its border with Guatemala is 956 km long, and with Belize it is 193 km. The distance from south to north of the country is 3,200 km as the crow flies, but the six main migration routes are over 5,000 km long.

The same pattern that has been seen in other hostels has been found at the Belén Migrant Shelter in Saltillo, the capital of the northeastern state of Coahuila, on the U.S. border, where since May the passage of children has risen from an average of four a month, to four a day.

“Its an extremely alarming situation,” Father Pedro Pantoja, who runs the hostel and is an expert on migration affairs, told IPS.

It is still not clear what has provoked this exodus of Central American children, many of them on their own, which has overwhelmed the capacity of the U.S. Border Patrol and created a humanitarian crisis in the United States, according to President Barack Obama.

Advocates for migrants in Mexico attribute the surge to the spread of rumours about future regularisation for migrants who enter the U.S. as children.

This, at least, is what has prompted Delsy, a 20-year-old Honduran woman who looks several years younger, to head north, leaving behind her mother, four siblings and her 15-month-old son.

“Someone told me that if I declare I’m under 18, I can get into the United States from (the northwestern border city of) Tijuana. She said it’s a sure thing, because that’s how she got in,” Delsy told IPS at the Irapuato shelter, shortly before taking the train to the border.

Since October 2013, more than 52,000 children have been detained in the United States. In Texas and Arizona, two states on the border with Mexico, facilities at detention centres and military bases are filled to overflowing  and minors are overcrowded while they await deportation.

Organisations working for migrants’ rights, like the Fray Matías de Córdova Human Rights Centre (CDHFrayMatías) in the southern city of Tapachula, in the state of Chiapas, documented the systematic increase in the influx and detention of children since 2011.

However, none of the governments involved took measures to combat it. What did change was the place of origin, because Mexico was formerly the main country of origin of migrant children.

In contrast, from Oct. 1, 2013 to Jun. 15, 2014 the U.S. authorities detained 15,027 children from Honduras, 12,670 from Guatemala, 12,146 from Mexico and 11,436 from El Salvador, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

The Washington-based Pew Research Centre linked the new places of origin of child migrants with indicators of violence.

“There is a humanitarian crisis, not only in the United States, but also in the northern triangle of Central America, and chiefly in Honduras, which is forcing children and victims of social and political violence to leave the region,” activist Diego Lorente of CDHFrayMatías told IPS.

The problem could be even worse than it seems, because thousands of child migrants who leave their homes never make it to the United States. Human rights organisations estimate that four out of 10 children who migrate do not even reach Mexico’s northern border.

Some are detained in Mexico. The government’s National Migration Institute reported that between Jan. 1 and Jun. 26, 2014, it had “rescued” 10,505 migrant children, who are in the process of being deported back to their countries.

But many more simply disappear in Mexican territory.

“It is an appalling bloodletting. Children aged 13-16 are sent straight into sexual exploitation or slave labour, or they are massacred or disappeared, or become hired killers,” said Pantoja of the Saltillo shelter.

In the United States, the law stipulates that children must be processed within 72 hours of their detention. The solution for most of them is for a relative to legally claim them, or to stay in shelters for a long time. When they reach their 18th birthday they must be deported.

On Jun. 30, Obama announced that his migration reform had met with stalemate in the House of Representatives, dominated by the rightwing opposition Republican Party, and that he would rely on executive action from now on to try to solve the crisis.

But there is no simple solution to the problem. According to the Honduran authorities, 3,000 children have dropped out of school so far this year in order to pursue the “American dream.”

“In Garifuna communities on the north coast of the country, many children are dropping out of classes because they are leaving the country with their parents or private persons, en route to the United States,” Honduran newspaper La Tribuna said on Jun. 28.

“The rumour spread like wildfire, and now there seems to be no stopping it,” said Guadalupe González at the Irapuato shelter, while two young Honduran women walk away, convinced that if they get to the border, all they have to do is say they are underage in order to get across it.

Most migrant children within the European Union are from member countries like Romania and Hungary, as well as from Turkey. Credit: Daan Bauwens/IPS

By Sabine Clappaert
BRUSSELS, Apr 2 2013 (IPS)

Twenty-two-year-old Dario (not his real name) came to Belgium from Brazil in 2005. Just a teenager at the time, he told IPS he “came to escape the economic, social and political conditions in Brazil and to learn another language”.

“In the beginning it was hard. Not speaking the language prevented me from doing certain jobs and there was also the risk of getting sick because I have no health insurance.”

Luckily, he says, the large Brazilian community in Brussels welcomed him with open arms.

“Of course one also suffers from the financial and moral exploitation of certain people who take advantage, but I don’t complain. Life is a sequence of good and bad experiences; it is part of the risk I took to better my life.”

The promise of a better future remains the principle reason why scores of children – some as young as three years, others as old as seventeen – flock to Europe, even though there is no guarantee that what they find here will be worth the trip.

While it is estimated that there are between 1.6 and 3.8 million irregular migrants in the European Union, there are no reliable figures on the percentage that are children.

Hard data is almost impossible to pin down since these children represent a multifaceted and diverse group, experts say. Most hail from other European countries like Turkey, Hungary and Romania, but a large number also come from Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria.

Some enter the EU independently, some come with families, or were born to parents without legal status in a particular country.

Motives for migration also vary, and include family reunification, protection from persecution, or better living conditions, education and economic opportunities. A large number of these children, mostly those from Hungary and Romania, are also victims of trafficking.

Last year the UK police, with the help of Romanian authorities, rolled up a complex trafficking network run from Romania, which was using children to rake in hundreds of thousands of pounds through street crime and benefit fraud.

In a series of dawn raids codenamed “Operation Norman” officers found 103 migrant children crammed into just 16 addresses in London.

The operation took place against the backdrop of a steady rise in the number of children arriving unaccompanied in Europe, risking detention. Although some manage to enter state welfare systems, others end up living in hiding.

The financial crisis has intensified the situation, especially in EU border countries like Greece.

“Despite the European Commission’s efforts to promote harmonised regulations, the normative framework in the EU27 for the protection of undocumented migrant children is still quite diverse,” Maria Grazia Giammarinaro, special representative and coordinator for combatting trafficking in human beings at the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), told IPS.

“The implementation of national legislation is even more fragmented. Therefore, unfortunately, a common and effective child protection system does not exist at the EU level.”

Organisations like the Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants (PICUM) have raised the alarm about the need to guarantee the basic human rights of Europe’s “invisible” children.

“Undocumented children are in a position of triple vulnerability: as children above all, as migrants and because of their irregular status,” Michelle LeVoy of PICUM told IPS. Many families are simply unaware of their rights to housing, food and education, she said.

Despite numerous explicit and legally binding international and regional instruments that guarantee children access to their civil and social rights, countless barricades stand between rights on paper and rights in practice.

“In Spain, for instance, undocumented children in theory have the same access to healthcare as Spanish nationals do,” said LeVoy. But implementation of a new healthcare law in September 2012 aimed at restricting undocumented adults’ access to healthcare services also impacted their children.

In some countries only “essential” or “urgent” medical care may be free of charge for undocumented children, broadly defined terms that often lead to discretionary and unpredictable application of healthcare legislation.

Barriers around education are equally complex. While the constitutions of several countries grant everyone the right to education, red tape often keeps undocumented children out of the system.

“(P)ractical and concrete barriers, rather than direct legal discrimination, make integration (into the education system) almost impossible,” according to LeVoy. “Throughout the EU undocumented children are often prevented from enrolling in schools simply because they lack identification documents and a permanent address.

“Admission depends on the decision of directors and school administrators, and those decisions are arbitrary,” she said.

OSCE’s Giammarinaro believes that “member states should establish effective procedures based on the best interests of the child, whose actual implementation should be adequately monitored, especially in the case of unaccompanied and separated children”.

A second disturbing trend is the increasing number of reports of unaccompanied foreign minors disappearing from immigration reception centres 
and residential care, often without a trace.

A study by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights reveals that the disappearance of children from shelters and similar facilities is widespread, and that there is a high risk of these children falling victim to trafficking.

“Children and adolescents on the move are particularly vulnerable to abuse and exploitation,” says Giammarinaro. “They can be exploited in prostitution, forced labour, organised begging and can be compelled to commit crimes. Therefore, the prevention of trafficking and the protection of undocumented children are inextricably linked.”

Experts have identified teenagers between the ages of 13 and 
18 years as a major at-risk group for trafficking in Eastern Europe. Even those children aware of the dangers of trafficking say they were nonetheless ready to migrate using insecure channels, according to recent UNICEF research in Moldova.

Idealised perceptions of a better lifestyle coupled with stories of success from people who have been abroad encourage risk-taking among disadvantaged youth, researchers say.

With unemployment hitting record-levels across the EU, stemming the tide of young people in search of a better future seems almost impossible and for many governments the only perceived solution, albeit short-term, is the expatriation of so-called “unwanted immigrants”.

In 2010, the OCSE advised that migrant, undocumented, unaccompanied, separated and trafficked children should not automatically be returned to their country of origin, or resettled or transferred to a third country, stating that migration control concerns cannot override the best interests of a child.

“In the absence of the availability of care provided by parents or members of the extended family, return to the country of origin should, in principle, not take place without advance secure and concrete arrangements of care and custodial responsibilities upon return to the country of origin.”

Thousands of Central American minors, like this 16-year-old Guatemalan migrant, make the dangerous journey across Mexico every year in the attempt to reach the United States. Credit:Wilfredo Díaz/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN SALVADOR , Oct 1 2012 (IPS)

For many undocumented child migrants from Central America, Mexico is the end of the road in their endeavour to reach the United States, driven by economic reasons, gang violence and domestic violence.

“Children have always migrated, and they have always been the most vulnerable,” Mexican academic Carolina Rivera, of the Centre for Research and Higher Studies in Social Anthropology (CIESAS) in Mexico, told IPS.

Since the flow of Central American migrants to the United States intensified in the 1980s due to the civil wars lashing the region, family breakdown has become a bigger and bigger problem. Parents leave in search of a better future and leave their children in the care of grandparents or other relatives.

According to estimates by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, around 15 percent of the 11.5 million undocumented Latin American migrants in the United States are from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

Added to the need for family reunification and the traditional economic reasons are other motives, like domestic violence, driving children and adolescents to leave the region, said Rivera, who has experience in the field with Central Americans in Mazatán, in the impoverished southern Mexican state of Chiapas.

Rivera said her research project found girls who had been beaten or raped by stepfathers or other relatives, prompting them to travel to the United States without documents.

She also found young Hondurans and Salvadorans who, upon coming out to their families as gay, were mistreated and ultimately thrown out of their homes.

Intra-family violence was a recurrent feature, said Rivera, who was a keynote speaker at a recent forum about migrant children in San Salvador.

There were 1,028 complaints filed of intra-family violence in El Salvador between January and June, nearly twice as many as the cases reported in the whole of last year, according to the national police.

When they are detained in Mexico, Central American children have few options: they can be deported, or they can live in this country and put up with constant violations of their rights.

Statistics from Mexico’s National Migration Institute (INM) indicate that between January and July, 3,391 Guatemalan, Honduran and Salvadoran children were deported, 50 percent more than in the same period in 2011.

Of these, 2,801 were unaccompanied, showing how vulnerable these migrant children are. Many of them are abandoned to their fate by “coyotes” or people smugglers.

“Many of them are caught up in human trafficking networks,” Jaime Rivas, the coordinator of the migrations programme of the government’s National Directorate of Investigations, told IPS.

“Things are no longer as they were when ‘coyotes’ were heroes who helped people reach the north. Now it is human trafficking networks linked to organised crime that move migrants,” he said.

An INM communiqué released in early September said many children were fleeing youth gangs in the violent northern countries of Central America, which force teenagers to join. If they refuse, they may be killed.

In El Salvador alone there are an estimated 60,000 gang members, belonging to the MS-13 (Mara Salvatrucha) or Barrio 18 gangs.

The report “Captured Childhood,” published in June by the International Detention Coalition (IDC), a human rights organisation with member groups in 50 countries, says that regardless of the conditions in which children are kept in detention for trying to cross a border, “detention has a profound and negative impact on children.

“Children are at risk of suffering depression and anxiety, as well as from symptoms such as insomnia. It undermines their psychological and physical health and compromises their development,” the report says.

The IDC says that undocumented children should not be detained, and recommends that governments create public policies for their protection.

In April 2011 Mexico approved a new migration law which, in principle, guarantees the human rights of foreigners in transit through its territory. But it is not yet in force because its detailed regulations have not been drafted.

Those who choose to stay in Mexico without documentation are exposed to extreme vulnerability in terms of labour conditions, Rivera said.

Her research found that 33 percent of child migrants worked in agriculture, often putting in long work days for below average pay.

A further 16 percent work in the service and entertainments sectors, especially Honduran and Salvadoran girls aged 15 to 17, who work as dancers in night clubs and are subject to sexual abuse. “Many of them feel enslaved and are unable to leave that milieu,” said Rivera.

These young women would prefer to work as domestic employees, but in that area of Mexico Salvadorans and Hondurans are stigmatised as home-wreckers, and indigenous Guatemalan women are hired instead, Rivera said.

Finally, the research found that 17 percent of migrant children and adolescents work as street vendors, and the remainder perform a variety of activities in the informal economy.

Only six percent of the teenage migrants had any higher education, and just two percent had taken some university courses.