Costa Rica - Officials from the 11 countries of the Regional Conference on Migration (CRM) took part in a meeting of the Regional Consultation Group on Migration this week in Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

During the three-day meeting, which ended yesterday (9 June), they highlighted that migration is a shared responsibility among countries of origin, transit and destination.

The CRM member States – Belize, Canada, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama and the United States – all face complex migration challenges, particularly growing numbers of unaccompanied migrant children, as well as migrants trying to reach the US from Asia and Africa.

IOM Regional Director for Central America and the Caribbean Marcelo Pisani said: "Shared responsibility means not only that everyone assumes individual responsibility when managing migration. It is not simply the sum of the individual responsibilities of each country. Shared responsibility implies that countries, whether of origin, transit or destination of migrants, get in their neighbor's shoes, so that they all take appropriate measures to ensure the necessary coordination of ideas and actions in the interest of an orderly and humane migration management for the benefit of migrants and communities."

It is estimated that in 2015 about 35,000 migrant children were held in Mexico due to their irregular immigration status. Between October 2015 and April 2016 nearly 33,000 unaccompanied children were intercepted at the southern US border. Between January and April 2016, around 54,000 people were deported from the US to the countries of the Northern Triangle of Central America (Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador).

This year, the Regional Conference on Migration celebrates its twentieth anniversary. In the last two decades, CRM countries have maintained their commitment to hold open discussions about regional migration issues and have conducted regional initiatives to protect the human rights of migrants and strengthen the integrity of immigration laws, borders and national security of Member States.

"The CRM has shown that this dialogue is possible and its actions have realized the principle of shared responsibility, essential to ensure effective governance of a phenomenon, such as migration, that has global and regional reach," said Pisani.

For further information, please contact Salvador Gutierrez at the IOM Regional Office in Costa Rica. Tel: +506 2221 5337, Email: sgutierrez@iom.int