The recently held Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, generated certain achievements, opportunities and challenges to promote the five central themes of the meeting, centered on the regional migration pact, health and resilience, jobs and digital economy, climate change and clean energy, and democratic governance.
These themes are in turn associated with three dimensions of the Summit.
Firstly, the geopolitical dimension according to the priorities of promoting governance and democracy in the countries of the region.
Associated with this point, we find the implicit questioning of countries considered undemocratic due to restrictions on freedom of expression of the press and free expression of ideas, such as Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.
The second dimension is linked to the various policy proposals presented within the framework of the Summit: a regional migration pact; empowerment initiative for women in a digital economy; Resilience of the Hemisphere’s Health Economy and Ecosystems; prevent abuse and harassment on the internet; climate change and job creation with clean energy and food security.
The third dimension is critical and central, but complex, as it seeks to make the above proposals viable through effective management, governance and policy formulation that are resilient, inclusive, sustainable and equitable.
That is, with governments and administrations responsible for creating social value and basic agreements with civil society and the private sector with criteria of transparency and accountability.
In this framework, one of the central proposals was the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection (White House, May 10, 2022). This initiative aims to mobilize the region to transform the approach to migration management in the Americas and is based on four central points.
The first point is stability and assistance to communities, which proposes to rethink the perspective of multilateral financing to promote development and better management of economies.
The challenge is whether the resources allocated will be sufficient in the face of the problems of the countries in the region, which have become more complex in the post-pandemic framework, such as the increase in social inequalities that have increased poverty and will limit growth, and therefore will influence the humanitarian exodus in the coming years.
The second aspect is the expansion of legal channels in terms of refuge and work visas. In this context, it is proposed to change the way people migrate based on institutionalized priority programs: jobs, protection and family reunification.
The challenge is whether the various alternatives to increase the refugee proposals presented will be sufficient in the face of the increase in requests from Latin America and the rest of the world.
The third point is human management of migration, which proposes the following strategies: a) human border control; b) return of migrants who do not have protection needs; c) facilitation of return to countries of most recent residence or origin; d) support for assisted voluntary returns; and e) greater exchange of information and bilateral and regional cooperation in the field of smuggling of migrants and trafficking in persons.
The question is whether this new approach to migration management from the United States and the countries of the region will have the institutional capacity to reduce the central role of human traffickers and their logic of corruption, and whether it will promote effective co-responsibility or shared responsibility to manage the different strategies. proposals.
The last point is a coordinated emergency response, which will promote safe, orderly and regular migration, as well as the security of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers in the region, particularly in situations of mass migration and refugee displacement.
This strategy reflects the current institutional framework. The problem is whether the recent wave of migration, which from October 2021 to April 2022 left more than 1.2 million irregular migrants detained by the US government (USCBP, April 2022), does not reflect a humanitarian crisis.
Another structural problem is whether the countries of the Northern Triangle (Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador) and Mexico have sufficient incentives to reduce or control irregular migration to the United States, considering that maintaining it or increasing migratory flows allows them to receive resources important through US remittances.
These have been the initiatives presented throughout the summit, but a fundamental condition for being able to make it happen is to promote effective co-responsibility between the countries of the region and the US government and effective management, governance and multilevel policies for development.
Otherwise, the proposals presented will not be viable.
