Tijuana, Mexico – Marina figured, if she stayed in Venezuela, her life can be brief. Possibly special security forces would kill her. Possibly the military. Possibly the police. Talking out towards the administration of Nicolás Maduro, she feared, can be a demise sentence.
“A technique or one other, they will kill you,” she stated. “I favor to go away earlier than they arrive to kill me.”
Marina felt she and her household had no selection however to flee. Escaping Venezuela was solely the beginning of her troubles, although.
Marina — who requested that her full identify be withheld — launched into the perilous trek many migrants and asylum seekers take: up via Central America to the border with america.
There, she hoped her household would discover a higher life. What occurred on the street, nevertheless, would go away two of her youngsters with lasting scars.
Within the tangled jungles of the Darién Gap, a sliver of land connecting Colombia to Panama, an armed gang captured their travelling get together.
“We have been separated, males on one aspect and ladies on the opposite,” Marina stated. She recalled that gang members began pulling some girls out of the group. “That’s once they took my two ladies.”
The remainder of the household was left behind, helpless. Marina understood that her teenage daughters — one 12, the opposite 14 — have been being sexually assaulted within the recesses of the forest.
“They introduced one again after about half an hour, however the youngest one took an hour,” she advised Al Jazeera.
Advocates say experiences like Marina’s have turn out to be all too widespread. As migration from South America to the US-Mexico border as soon as once more surges, sexual violence is likewise anticipated to rise, notably amongst girls and ladies.
Every year, hundreds of individuals make the journey to the border — however in 2023, officers are documenting record highs.
In Panama, 500,000 people had crossed the Darién Hole as of December, far exceeding the earlier yr’s total whole of 250,000.
In the meantime, on the US-Mexico border, the US Customs and Border Safety company notched 2,475,669 “encounters” with undocumented migrants in 2023 — a complete by no means earlier than surpassed.
That soar has correlated with elevated studies of sexual assaults. In 2023, the humanitarian organisation Medical doctors With out Borders (MSF) handled 397 cases of sexual violence within the Darién Hole. In a single week alone, the group noticed 59 instances.
These numbers, reported final month, mark a major leap over the earlier yr’s whole of 180.
Many of the survivors have been grownup girls. However 6 p.c have been minors, some as younger as 11.
And the actual scale of the issue could also be even bigger. “Underneath-reporting is gigantic,” Medical doctors With out Borders stated in a press launch.
![A cluster of personal tents sits outside in Panama, alongside a larger, white tent for UNICEF services. Children and adults are scattered among the tents.](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Tents-at-the-San-Vicente-camp-in-Panama-after-crossing-the-Darien-Gap-1703127097.jpg?resize=770%2C513)
Specialists say the issue extends properly past the Darién Hole, with girls and ladies going through sexual violence all alongside the migration route — and throughout the US border too.
However the boundaries to reporting sexual assault could be excessive. Many migrants and asylum seekers are reluctant to report their experiences for quite a lot of causes: They could lack immigration papers, making them cautious of authorities, or could be unfamiliar with their environment.
By her work with the Refugee Well being Alliance (RHA), an organisation based mostly in Tijuana, Mexico, midwife Ximena Rojas noticed that even the method of submitting a report and present process a forensic examination could be traumatising for survivors.
“For a survivor of trafficking, assault or torture, whenever you conduct an examination, these recollections [of violence] could awaken,” Rojas stated. “So it’s important to be very current, letting them breathe and have management over whether or not to proceed or cease.”
She has even realized of migrant girls taking preemptive measures earlier than travelling north, on the idea that they are going to be raped or assaulted alongside the best way.
One widespread technique is to spend money on a long-term contraception, administered by way of injection, one thing that Rojas has heard referred to as the “anti-Mexico vaccine”.
“It’s very unhappy that the ‘anti-Mexico vaccine’ means girls take as a right that they’ll face that sort of violence,” Rojas stated. “It’s like paying the value for a greater life.”
![A woman in a black T-shirt looks up at a window with a painted logo, advertising services for migrant women.](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Ximena-Rojas-at-the-door-of-the-RHA-clinic-in-Tijuana-1703126066.jpeg?w=770&resize=770%2C513)
Janira Arévalo, one of many many migrants and asylum seekers ready in a brief shelter facility close to the border in Tijuana, stated she travelled with a buddy who took that precaution.
Earlier than leaving their residence nation of El Salvador, Arévalo stated her buddy paid a physician $15 for a three-month contraceptive injection.
“The journey isn’t straightforward. There’s a danger of being raped, kidnapped,” Arévalo defined. “My buddy acquired a contraceptive injection there in El Salvador, to stop being pregnant in case of abuse.”
Whereas Arévalo and her buddy skilled no sexual violence alongside their journey, human rights and well being organisations are struggling to offer care to those that do.
Diana Arenas, a therapist with RHA, stated she encounters survivors who grapple with how you can cope.
“It’s such an awesome scenario that generally they block these recollections,” she advised Al Jazeera.
Making an attempt to get the ladies to confront their traumas could be dangerous, although. “If I have been to open that up proper now, a thousand issues would come out that can’t be totally addressed in the mean time as a result of they’re simply passing via,” Arenas defined.
To assist handle the dangers of sexual violence, some organisations have arrange women-only shelters alongside migration routes to the US and referred to as for extra sources — each to crack down on the violence itself and to assist survivors.
Magdalena Bautista, the pinnacle of the Centre for Justice for Girls, a state-run organisation in Baja California, advised Al Jazeera she noticed demand for companies improve in 2023.
Whereas 47 migrant girls got here to the centre after experiences with sexual violence in 2022, that quantity rose to virtually 60 this yr.
![A woman lies down on an outdoor cot, while a child sits perched her feet, smiling at the camera.](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Men-and-women-rest-at-the-San-Vicente-camp-in-Panama-after-having-crossed-the-Darien-jungle-1703126362.jpeg?w=770&resize=770%2C513)
However advocates are additionally calling on governments to regulate their immigration procedures to minimize the specter of sexual violence within the first place.
A report printed in November by the nonprofit Human Rights First discovered 1,300 reported assaults alongside the US-Mexico border since Could, when US President Joe Biden tightened policies for asylum purposes.
These embrace incidents of sexual violence. In a single case, “a Latin American mom and her minor youngsters” have been ready to hunt asylum when “they have been kidnapped and sexually assaulted” by a drug cartel. In one other, cartel members drugged and sexually assaulted a seven-year-old little one, holding him and his mom captive for 3 weeks.
The nonprofit stated the new restrictions within the asylum course of have left candidates successfully “stranded in Mexico”, the place they’re weak to such violence.
Underneath the brand new guidelines, the Biden administration requires most asylum seekers to make use of its CBP One app to schedule appointments with immigration officers.
However customers have reported lengthy wait instances and glitchy service, and human rights organisations have warned the brand new course of creates “significant barriers” to asylum entry.
Crossing irregularly, nevertheless, may end in being barred from the US for as much as 5 years.
“It was horrible. You don’t know for those who’ll get out alive. My youngsters cried and cried,” one asylum seeker within the report stated of the scenario on the border. A lady of their household had been sexually abused “whereas ready for a CBP One appointment”.
“We’ve been ready for an appointment that doesn’t arrive,” one other member of the household stated.