Migration Colombia will strengthen its presence in Acandí and Necoclí, gate of the Darién. Work will be done on the creation of a Migratory Verification Center in Acandí and the one in Necoclí will be consolidated.
Migration Colombia will strengthen its presence in the municipalities of Acandí, Chocó, and Necoclí, Antioquia, which serve as a gateway for migrants heading towards the Darién jungle, on the border with Panama, the authorities announced this Saturday.
Work will be done on the creation of a Migratory Verification Center in Acandí and the one in Necoclí will be consolidated, Border Dialogues for Life will be scheduled in Acandí and Turbo and workshops on immigration regulations will be held in these three municipalities.
These are the main results of the Border Dialogues for Life led by the immigration authority in Necoclí, held with the aim of addressing “the challenges of migration,” the immigration authorities reported this Saturday in a statement.
With the participation of around 500 people from different communities and sectors, this meeting allowed for the first time direct contact between them and government entities to agree, first-hand, solutions to the problems surrounding the migratory phenomenon.
From the port of Necoclí, the migrants take a boat that leaves them in Acandí, Chocó, and they begin the journey through the dangerous jungle that can take a week to reach Panama.
This dialogue in Necoclí “allowed different entities to learn directly about the most pressing needs of the population, committing to work in an articulated manner at the national and territorial levels in order to provide them with timely solutions,” explained the general director of Colombia’s Migration, Fernando García Manosalva.
Among the other agreements reached in these dialogues are the installation of months of work with the Colombian Institute for Family Welfare (ICBF), family police stations and the Children’s Police for the control of unaccompanied children on the docks.
In the education sector, for example, it was agreed to hold technical roundtables between the Nation and the territory to generate a relevant educational model that takes into account the floating migrant population that has access to this right.
More than 100,000 irregular migrants have already crossed the Darién jungle so far this year, a “worrying increase” by six-fold the figure for the same period in 2022, as the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) warned this April ) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM).