FOREWORD
For the Americas, 2017 was a year of great concern. In Colombia, despite the implementation of the peace agreement, numerous community leaders were reportedly murdered, there was new displacement, both internal and external, and child recruitment by armed groups and gender‑based violence continued along the Pacific Coast and in border areas. Around 1.5 million Venezuelans left their country, and hundreds of thousands remained in an irregular situation, making them particularly vulnerable to exploitation, trafficking, violence, forced recruitment, sexual abuse, discrimination and xenophobia. Asylum applications from the North of Central America increased due to violence and insecurity caused by gangs and drug cartels, which particularly affected children and families. Though the response from host countries to mixed flows has been generous, national capacities throughout the Americas region were overstretched. UNHCR continued supporting governments in their response, but needs were higher than the Office’s capacity to respond.
However, 2017 was also a year of hope, solidarity and a renewed commitment from countries in the region to improving the lives of refugees, asylum‑seekers, IDPs and the stateless. It was the third year of implementation of the Brazil Declaration and Plan of Action and, as a result, 35 States and territories participated in national and regional consultations to evaluate their progress. The talks culminated in the 100 Points of Brasilia— a regional compilation of best practices for supporting people of concern— which constituted the contribution from Latin America and the Caribbean to the development and implementation of the global compact on refugees.
Equally inspiring was the way the Americas pioneered the regional application of Annex 1 of the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants— the Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework (CRRF). In October 2017, Belize, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and Panama agreed to its regional application, the Comprehensive Regional Protection and Solutions Framework, known as MIRPS (Marco Integral Regional para la Protección y Soluciones). In line with this framework, these countries committed to strengthening their protection responses and intensifying their search for solutions for people fleeing violence in the North of Central America. The MIRPS places emphasis on a comprehensive regional approach that includes countries of origin, transit and asylum. It aims to mitigate and address the root causes of displacement, minimize the suffering and exploitation of those fleeing, provide access to effective asylum procedures, and promote safe, dignified and sustainable solutions. While Central American countries demonstrated exemplary ownership of the process in 2017, their protection mechanisms and social services remained increasingly overstretched.
International support continued to be needed to complement their efforts and achieve the desired impact of this new framework.
The Americas continued to be a worldwide leader in solutions. In 2017, the region received more than 50,000 refugees resettled mostly in Canada and the United States of America. Meanwhile, Argentina,
Brazil and Chile designed and implemented resettlement and community‑based sponsorship programmes. Local integration was boosted with the adoption of public policies at the national and local level that facilitated the inclusion of refugees and stateless persons (see the chapter on Building better futures).
The continent also made strides towards eradicating statelessness. The Parliaments of Chile and Haiti began accession to the 1954 and 1961 UN Statelessness Conventions, while Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba and Ecuador adopted legal measures to prevent statelessness, facilitate the naturalization of stateless persons, or establish statelessness determination procedures.
Renata Dubini
Director of UNHCR’s Regional Bureau for the Americas