Lack of jobs, inability to access the financial system or lack of a support network. These are some of the problems faced by migrant women in Central America.
To understand the type of support these migrant women need, it is essential to understand the difficulties that thousands of them go through every day. Ilka Treminio, director of FLACSO Costa Rica, details this and other facts in this interview.
Why is it important for destination countries to support these migrant women?
Well, the migratory horizon points precisely to these destination countries and their objective is to find a quality of life there that they do not have in their countries of origin. They are people in general who are at an age that is ideal to feed the human resource, the labor force, to join the labor market in the best conditions and therefore they are people who are willing to contribute as part of the labor force of the country.
But also because these people already bring, let's say, a series of burdens of violence, as I said in the past, and it is important to allow them to open the doors to opportunities that generate a new horizon of life expectations for them. In addition, what we have found is that the women who are in these migratory processes, many come accompanied by their families.
We are seeing a migratory process with a female face and this is also central in the countries that must finally pay attention so that the reunification and also the complement of life from the settlement with their families is positive. This service of support for the inclusion of the countries, in reality has many perspectives. It is a complex task.
What would you say is the most urgent?
Well, health care services, and here we would talk about a fairly comprehensive and complex health care approach.
People who are in the migratory process suffer different types of illnesses, diseases, abuses, violence that are expressed both physically and emotionally. And therefore, as they go through their different stations in the Central American migratory process, they require both the filing of complaints and physical and emotional care, in terms of both cures and psychological care mechanisms that allow them to be contained.
But it is also very important that there are public policies that allow tracing and provide access to people's identity. This is also essential.
So, difficulties in the services that have to do with the possibility of identifying oneself and with the possibility of being attended in different areas of health, in a broader view, are for me the most urgent.
Interviewer: Álvaro G. de Pablo, Communications Associate at The World Bank