The Alliance

Following the summit held at the White House, a proposal made by Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador was submitted to the United States and to Secretary of State John Kerry that focuses on the need to restrain the migration of children and adults by tracing the migration back to its origin — a factor usually ignored — and by implementing repressive policies.

The Alliance for Prosperity in the Northern Triangle is an ambitious project initiated to fulfill a joint responsibility to solve the problem. Colombia, an origin of and market for drugs flowing into countries that make up Central America, and Mexico, an obligatory route in the exodus toward the north, have joined the alliance as members.

“Just like this morning [when] President Obama asked for [a multinational force to confront] radical fundamentalists, I wonder what is the difference between people displaced by violence in other regions and those displaced by violence generated by drug traffickers and transnational crime? Our territory is now one of the principle battlegrounds of a war that is not ours, a war that we didn’t start, whose strategies are decided outside Honduras” and involve “drug-consuming countries in the north and drug-producing countries in the south”, emphasized President Juan Orlando Hernández in his speech at the United Nations General Assembly.

The worldwide platform on which the Honduran president placed the migration issue once he had presented it at the International Conference on Population and Development Beyond 2014 presents a big challenge as immigration is introduced into the agenda of those countries that generate crisis and the international bodies that guarantee human rights. This is because “today, we talk about what is happening in other regions to children, young people, families displaced by war, violence and radical extremists,” Hernández said. “But little is said about the situation of thousands of families in the Northern Triangle of Central America.” He also said that as human beings, we cannot forget about this.

The alliance’s proposal has four central linchpins, which reflect endemic situations in the poorest and more excluded sectors. The need to emigrate can fade, and thousands of families in the region can instead find hope through increasing job opportunities, created with the investment that would contribute to economic recovery.

This requires the development and training of human capital, providing educational coverage and quality at all levels, health services, childcare, and increasing the quality of life in dejected and frozen-out areas. The security of people, the application of justice, and the institutional strengthening that are the foundation of the Alliance for Prosperity will lead to its success. Moving from theory to practice is needed now. This is still a long way off!