Informing humanitarians worldwide 24/7 — a service provided by UN OCHA

Haiti + 7 more

Haitian Forced Migration in the Americas: Trajectories and Protection Gaps – 2023 [EN/KR]

Attachments

Context

In the last decades, the Haitian diaspora has been a constant reality in the migratory flows panoramas of the Americas and the Caribbean. However, in 2021, record numbers were observed in their migratory movements, becoming the leading actor of a new massive exodus in the region, this time not from Haiti but from the southern countries where Haitians had settled1. Even though there has been a reduction in recent years, this flow continues to be significant.

There is also a large number of people seeking to leave Haiti due to the situation of insecurity and violence in the country, heading both to the Dominican Republic and other countries in the Americas to join this migratory route.

This situation sets a crisis that includes a route to the United States, focused on four borders:

U.S.-Mexico

Mexico-Guatemala

Panama-Colombia

Dominican Republic-Haiti

Has demonstrated a regional incapacity to manage and assist this flow. These people, mainly driven by the structural crisis in Haiti and violence, as well as the racism, discrimination, and rejection they face in host countries, together with the lack of opportunities for a better life, move in an almost invisible way through the Americas.

In this context, JRS LAC initiated a data collection process in 2023 with Haitian people in mobility and those with settlement intentions in different parts of the continent. To have a proper, accurate, and grounded identification of the current migratory flow, their barriers to rights access, their differential needs for protection, capacities, and opportunities for accompaniment and care in the region.

The data collection has been developed in close collaboration with other organizations, including different organizations of the humanitarian sector in Chile, Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, and Mexico, the Interagency Group on Mixed Migratory Flows - GIFMM of Urabá (Colombia) and its allied organizations, JRS Mexico, JRS Ecuador, and JRS Colombia.