Strengthening knowledge, evidence use and leadership in the Global South on forced displacement: Mexico and Central America

 

Some 79.5 million people worldwide are forcibly displaced as a result of persecution, conflict, violence, human rights violations, economic hardships, climate change and prolonged instances of political fragility. Eighty percent of the world’s forcibly displaced people are hosted in countries in the Global South but almost all of the research that influences policy and practice originates from researchers based in the Global North.

In recent years, there has been a substantial increase in people from Central American and Caribbean countries, as well as other parts of the world, arriving in Mexico to cross the border into the United States. Many people stay in border cities in northern Mexico waiting for limited legal opportunities. Moreover, a significant number of migrants from other countries enter Mexico every day through its southern border. The increasing diversity of the national groups that have arrived in Mexico has posed new challenges and difficulties, not only for the management of migration and the guarantee of migrants’ rights, but also for the central authorities as well as the municipal governments where these populations come to live. They lack information to identify the needs of these people as well as their vulnerabilities.

This project will support research on issues of forced displacement related to the northern and southern borders of Mexico. It will aim to generate information on the social and emotional processes and the principal needs of this population, highlighting the risks affecting girls and women. It will generate information on civil society organizations that aid migrants and it will generate interdisciplinary research based on a collective agenda among stakeholders that provides new perspectives and possible solutions. Training will be developed for the authorities and campaigns and investigations will sensitize the general population as well as promote their inclusion in the design of policies to increase access to services such as health, education, housing and work.

This project is part of IDRC’s five-year initiative on forced displacement through support to research chairs in established universities in four regions (East Africa, the Middle East, Central and South America, and South and Southeast Asia).