Dozens of migrants sleep in tents near the docks in Turbo, one of the main departure points for the Darién Gap – the stateless and lawless stretch of jungle that connects Colombia to Panama.
Paula, a Venezuelan mother, applies sunscreen to her four children to protect them from the scorching equatorial sun as they help her sell bottled water. They’ve been stranded here for weeks, trying to raise $200 to pay for boat passage and guides to cross the border.
To feed her children, Paula relies on a soup kitchen for migrants run by a private Christian association. That's all the assistance she receives. The tent nearby that advertises basic medical care for migrants is unstaffed even though it is a weekday.
“There are very few regular services [for migrants],” Paula said, speaking in April 2024 when The New Humanitarian met her during a month-long reporting trip to the Darién region. “But we’ve almost saved enough to cross,” she added, preferring to only give her first name.
The Darién has quickly become one of the world's worst migration crises. While only 24,000 people took the route five years ago, more than half a million migrants crossed in 2023, desperate to head northwards for the United States despite the many risks.
Nearly 240,000 migrants and asylum seekers had crossed this year by August. Two thirds are Venezuelan, but they come from dozens of other countries too, from as far afield as Afghanistan and Sudan. The top five nationalities include China, along with Ecuador, Colombia, and Haiti.
Those who cross face a host of physical and health risks and are increasingly victims of robberies and sexual violence. Given the magnitude of the needs, there has been little by way of a humanitarian response, and aid groups fear the situation could now worsen as Venezuela’s electoral crisis drives more citizens out of the country.
US-Panama deal adds to the dangers
Many migrants are already in need of assistance when they reach Colombia, let alone by the time they’ve made it through the Darién, if indeed they do: The Venezuelans The New Humanitarian encountered, in particular, had long lacked access to basic medical attention, such as prenatal or paediatric care, or treatment for preexisting conditions.
According to Red Cross Colombia workers in the nearby town of Necoclí, malnutrition is common among migrants, and R4V – the interagency coordination platform for Venezuelan refugees and migrants – identifies acute malnutrition in children under five as one of the most common health conditions they treat there.
According to a September 2023 report by Action Against Hunger, migrants who, like Paula, become stranded face a “lack of safe shelters, the inexistence of places to do their necessities, and limited access to food and hygiene products”. People sleep in improvised tents or outdoors and use plastic sheets to protect themselves from the rain.
Those who make it to Panama present even greater needs, but assisting them is becoming more and more difficult due to political and policy changes. Recently elected President José Raúl Mulino has promised to “close the Darién Gap”, playing to increasing anti-immigrant sentiment in the country.
In July, Mulino signed a deal with the United States, which agreed to spend $6 million to deport migrants by plane, as part of an agreement to reduce irregular crossings at the US southern border.
The Panamanian authorities have closed several routes people use to exit the Darién by erecting razor-wire fences, and they also plan to shut down three of the four reception centres that provide crucial humanitarian aid.
Experts say these measures will make the journey more dangerous, and overburden already strained aid groups in the region, while doing little to stem the flow of migrants.
“They absolutely cannot logistically close the Darién Gap,” said Adam Isacson, border researcher at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA). “Panama simply doesn’t have the resources or the personnel.”
Demonised aid groups
Even before Mulino’s election, Panamanian authorities blamed humanitarian organisations for providing services in the Darién.
The former director of Panama’s National Migration Service (SNM), Samira Gozaine, recently said that international organisations “foster transit through the jungle” and accused the UN’s migration agency (IOM) and UNICEF of doing “nothing to assist us in managing a crisis in which Panama is a victim”.
Last March, Panama shut down Médecins Sans Frontières operations after the organisation drew attention to the rise of sexual assaults on the Panamanian side of the Darién and criticised the government's lack of action. The decision had a wide impact.
“[It] sent a clear message to other humanitarian organisations: If you’re too vocal about conditions on the trail, they’re going to kick you out,” Isacson said.
Several NGOs told the New Humanitarian they now feel they have to stay away and that they have faced challenges elsewhere too in responding to the Darién crisis.*
Francisco Pulido, who works as a consultant in the humanitarian sector in Colombia**, said authorities both at the national and the international level have been pressuring aid groups.
“Sometimes aid organisations are demonised by politicians for providing services to migrants due to a perception that they are ‘facilitating’ migration patterns that governments would prefer ended,” he said, stressing that this complaint hasn't been coupled with more state assistance.
Criminal rule
On the Colombian side of the Darién Gap, infrastructure and humanitarian personnel are scarce outside of Turbo and Necoclí, where NGOs have focused their efforts.
In addition to the political pressures, NGOs operating in the region face severe logistical challenges: transportation infrastructure is virtually non-existent, electricity is powered by local gasoline generators, and communities rely on deliveries by boat for even basic goods.
Additionally, the lack of a state presence has allowed the Gaitanista Army of Colombia (EGC) or Gulf Clan – the largest drug cartel in the country – to establish effective control over the departments of Chocó and Antioquia that border the Darién Gap.
The EGC taxes all economic activity, formal or informal, including the booming migration industry, and acts as the de facto government, which places severe restrictions on the humanitarian response.
With the exception of the Red Cross, it is illegal for NGOs to communicate directly with criminal armed groups. “This means that international organisations cannot ask permission from EGC to operate in the region,” said Isacson. “And if they decide to use community members as liaisons, that can at times put [the liaisons] at risk.”
In any case, some aid groups prefer not to operate in certain areas to avoid legitimising EGC’s illegal migration business, according to Pulido. “The main call is on the national, departmental, and local governments to act, because what is missing there is state control,” he said.
Diana Romero, emergency specialist at UNICEF Panama, said looking after the needs of such a large volume of migrants is barely manageable. In 2023, about 3,300 unaccompanied children crossed the treacherous border, with another 2,400 doing so in the first semester of this year.
“The number of children crossing overwhelms any existing institutional capacity to meet all the children’s needs adequately,” she told The New Humanitarian. “It's difficult to find NGOs or operators fit to address child protection that will go to the small municipalities in border areas, and finding places to operate that meet the standards required is also a challenge.”
According to a 12 September Human Rights Watch report, the Colombian government has “no reliable data on the number of migrants crossing and their needs, which hinders the effective provision of food, water, and sanitation”.
Additionally, the report notes that the “local mayor’s offices lack the capacity to handle the influx due to insufficient expertise, personnel, and resources”.
Competing for shrinking aid funding
In Las Tecas, the informal migrant encampment at the mouth of the Darién Gap, Médecins du Monde operates a small medical station providing assistance for a host of conditions – from nutritional problems to exhaustion, from heat-related conditions to physical injuries.
“Operating and storage space are severely limited, and refrigeration is unavailable,” Lucile Leverrier, communications coordinator for the organisation, told The New Humanitarian by phone from the Colombian capital, Bogotá. “Our doctors are unable to stock many specialised medicines, limiting the scope of treatments they are able to provide.”
“It’s not unusual we diagnose someone with a serious condition or disease such as HIV, and the migrant simply continues on the next day,” one aid worker at Las Tecas’ Médecins du Monde treatment centre told The New Humanitarian, asking for his name not to be disclosed because he wasn’t at liberty to speak for his organisation. “We can only hope they seek more comprehensive treatment elsewhere.”
“If we even knew for certain how many migrants leave from the Colombian side each day, we could compare that to numbers arriving in Panama and better identify people who have gone missing.”
As funding for humanitarian assistance dwindles globally, NGOs operating in the region work on increasingly shrinking budgets. For 2023, IOM and the UN’s refugee agency (UNHCR) appealed for $1.72 billion to address the needs of Venezuelan migrants and refugees, but only 35.5% of the plan was funded.
This shrinking funding has meant rising rivalry within the sector.
“The competition between NGOs for resources is making them less willing to share data with other organisations,” said one humanitarian worker, who also requested to speak anonymously. “If they think they have a unique perspective, or are doing something no one else is, they view that as an advantage in convincing an ever-smaller donor base to support their activities in the region.”
Cristián García, who works for the UN body coordinating the humanitarian aid response (GIFMM) in Colombia’s Urabá region, where Necoclí is located, said better coordination between NGOs would avoid some of the current overlaps. GIFMM has been working on promoting data-sharing and task management between the NGOs so they can better assess the needs addressed in the region.
Better coordination between the Colombian and Panamanian authorities could also improve migrant safety. “If we even knew for certain how many migrants leave from the Colombian side each day, we could compare that to numbers arriving in Panama and better identify people who have gone missing,” García said.
None of the challenges or dangers will stop Paula from continuing her journey northward. After three years in Colombia, she is determined to leave. “There is too much xenophobia, and finding regular work is difficult,” she said. “I think we could build a better life in the United States.”
* A quote that was wrongfully attributed to a source due to a reporting error has been removed from this section.
** A previous version of this story wrongfully stated that Francisco Pulido works for Plan International in Colombia.
Edited by Daniela Mohor.
