Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said on Monday that at least 68 percent of Central American migrants who cross Mexico in their attempts to arrive in the United States admitted to being victims of violence. The organization pointed out that one third of women were sexually abused and one quarter of the consultations given to these people were related to intentional physical injury or trauma.
It explained that in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, in the past two months, one of every four patients assisted by the MSF mental health teams had been victims of kidnapping.
The group added that in the context of the Global Compact for Migration summit, held a few days ago in Marrakeck, Morocco, the MSF international president, Joanne Liu, noted that people from the countries of the North Central American Triangle flee violence and threats in their places of origin only to enter a horrifying cycle of exploitation and abuse.
The people who live there are aware of the suffering they will experience by undertaking the journey, but even the knowledge of such risks does not deter them from fleeing their habitat and running the risk of suffering all the misfortunes surrounding the US government's decision to prevent them from crossing the border.
MSF recalled that women and even girls use contraceptives because they assume that they will be raped during their journey to the United States. People are forced to choose between violence in their countries and the distant possibility of a future filled with hope.
The doctors' denunciation came at a time when a big international scandal over the seven-year-old Guatemalan girl who died of starvation and thirst while being under custody of US guards, and President Donald Trump washed his hands over the case and even justified his order of separating children from their parents.
