1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
As violence has worsened and poverty and inequality remain prevalent, the Central American governments of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, also known as the Northern Triangle, are doubly failing to protect their citizens: socioeconomic conditions remain poor and an increasingly violent environment permeates every corner of their countries, which causes people to flee in record numbers, but governments are failing to provide protection to those who are deported back to the same dangerous climates from which they ran.
Amnesty International is undertaking a multi-year, transnational investigation into the various components of this regional crisis, including future research which will examine the dangers of asylum-seekers’, refugees’ and migrants’ journeys through Mexico and the failings of the regional response to the surge in refugee protection needs. Future investigation will particularly highlight how practices in Mexico and the US violate the principle of non-refoulement, which under international law forbids a State from returning a refugee to a country where they will face persecution or danger.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has established that asylum-seekers from the Northern Triangle countries fall within a certain risk profle: those persecuted by a gang due to the gang’s perception that they do not comply with the gang’s authority; persons working or involved in activities susceptible to extortion; victims and witnesses of crimes committed by gangs or members of the security forces; children and youth from areas where gangs operate; women and girls in areas where gangs operate; and LGBTI people.
UNHCR advises that all these groups may be in need of international protection under the 1951 Refugee Convention. Regional instruments such as the Cartagena Declaration clearly calls for refugee status for those persons fleeing generalized violence in their countries, such as those from Central America’s Northern Triangle. To truly understand the regional dynamics of human mobility, Amnesty International chose to frst investigate the conditions in which these people begin and often end their perilous journey - their countries of origin - and found that the governments of these countries are failing their citizens every step of the way.
The migration flow from Northern Triangle countries through Mexico to the United States is a decades-long phenomenon. But the last several years have seen the development of a new reality that pushes people to leave their homes: soaring violence has caused rising numbers of people to run north to save their lives. Despite this situation, impunity remains the norm for most crimes and access to justice is mere wishful thinking. Moreover, people in the Northern Triangle have also reason to fear that the authorities who are supposed to protect them are complicit in organized crime or are the perpetrators of abuses themselves. Citizens of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras fght a daily battle to survive amidst ubiquitous violence and fleeing their countries is often the only choice they have.