Today, a group of U.S. human rights, foreign policy, faith, children’s rights, and humanitarian organizations released Serve Your People, a report that provides a roadmap for transforming relations between the United States and the northern countries of Central America (El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras) under a new administration. The United States’ approach towards the region from 2017-2020 has had one near exclusive focus—stopping migration. The U.S. government has turned a blind eye towards the drivers of the forced migration from these countries and in doing so, has allowed governments in the region to remove obstacles to their own corruption and scale up abuses against their own citizens. At the same time, the Trump Administration has eviscerated access to protection for refugees and asylum seekers at our border and throughout the region.
“Seeking refuge is not a crime, which in the context of Central America, still means seeking refuge from persecution and violence but now also from climate change,” says Amali Tower, founder and executive director of Climate Refugees. “It’s long overdue to end the shameful assault on asylum policy, but also to have a wider conversation, which includes climate justice policies that represent the voices of migrant farmers who tell us about climate change impacts we know they had little role in creating, yet are forced to flee.”