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Judi Lynn

(160,505 posts)
Sun Jan 2, 2022, 04:10 AM Jan 2022

UN provides life-saving aid for refugees and migrants in Mexico, as numbers soar

2 January 2022
Migrants and Refugees

For several years, the number of people transiting through Mexico, many hoping for a better life in the USA, has continued to grow. The UN team in the country, in close collaboration with the Mexican authorities, is working to ensure that they receive essential, and often life-saving, assistance.

When life in her country became too dangerous, Natalia* took her children and fled. She managed to cross into Mexico via the southern border, but once she arrived in the country, she had no means of providing for herself and her family.

Her story is similar to those of many other desperate people who head to Mexico, increasingly seen as a country of transit and asylum: In 2014, 2,100 people arrived in the country to request refugee status; five years later, in 2019, that had risen to more than 70,000.

The figures dropped in 2020, as travel restrictions imposed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic slowed global migration but, between January and November 2021, the country received more than 123,000 asylum requests from people coming from Caribbean, Central American and South American countries (Haiti, Honduras, Cuba, El Salvador, Chile, Venezuela, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Brazil and Colombia).

Natalia and her children are now being supported by the UN refugee agency, (UNHCR), which has found them a safe place to live, and psychological aid. Many others in a similar situation are being supported with life-saving information and other kinds of assistance at the shelters and institutions that work together with UN agencies in Mexico.

More:
https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/01/1108892


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