By Simon Lewis
BOGOTA (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met Colombian President Ivan Duque on Wednesday ahead of talks with regional officials to discuss migration in the Americas.
Blinken, who is visiting South America for three days, arrived in the Colombian capital from Ecuador and headed to the presidential palace, where he was greeted by Duque.
Colombia is hosting a ministerial meeting on migration later on Wednesday which is expected to include foreign ministers from Chile, Brazil, Costa Rica, Honduras and Peru.
Before leaving the Ecuadorean capital of Quito, Blinken said countries in the Western Hemisphere must work together to stem what he called “an almost unprecedented moment for migration.”
Poverty and violence in the region’s most troubled countries – including the ‘Northern Triangle’ of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, as well Venezuela and Haiti – has driven migration flows both north to the United States and towards other parts of Latin America.
Colombia has recently seen thousands of mostly Haitian migrants congregating as they wait to travel north, and for some time has been the top destination for people fleeing economic and social collapse in neighboring Venezuela.
Economic downturns sparked by the coronavirus pandemic have made jobs scarce through much of the region, often hitting immigrants hardest.
“COVID-19 has had such a devastating economic impact that it has denied opportunity in places where opportunity was already lacking,” Blinken said, after giving a speech at a private university in Quito.
“No one of our countries addressing it alone is going to succeed. We have to have a sense of shared responsibility and common action.”
Blinken’s visit to Quito focused on highlighting that country’s democratic credentials at a time when authoritarianism is on the rise.
Ahead of his visit to Colombia, Human Rights Watch wrote to Blinken urging him to press Duque on growing violence by armed groups, police abuses against protesters, and aerial fumigation of coca crops, which Duque’s government has taken steps to reinstate to tackle cocaine production.
(Reporting by Simon Lewis, Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)
