Please refer to the attached file.
This document has been prepared by the Protection Sectors of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, jointly with the Regional Protection Sector with support from NORCAP, to provide key information to help inform the need to maintain the perspective of violence and human mobility in humanitarian programming and response in Central America. Key data are presented below, with figures updated by country, to describe the magnitude of this problem and emphasize the immediate need to maintain and increase the humanitarian response to people affected by violence in the region.
Factors that describe the urgent need to respond to the consequences of violence and human mobility in NCA:
● Maintaining violence and human mobility as drivers in humanitarian programming: The data provide evidence to establish that violence continues to displace people, destroy livelihoods and generate large-scale protection needs. Ignoring this reality in humanitarian analyses fails to reflect the situation faced by thousands of families in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.
● The data support the need for prioritization beyond the El Niño phenomenon: Quantitative data and evidence collected on the ground show that certain territories and population groups that suffer the consequences of threats, homicides, gender-based violence, extortion, territorial control, recruitment of children and adolescents and other forms of violence must continue to be prioritized; regardless of whether these coincide with the effects of the phenomenon del Niño.
● Convergence of phenomena: The combination of homicides, sexual violence, domestic violence and evictions is pushing increasing numbers of people to leave their homes. Each territory excluded from the humanitarian response today represents a much greater human and operational cost tomorrow.
● What is not measured is made invisible: Excluding indicators of violence, displacement and protection from humanitarian needs analyses implies underestimating the real magnitude of the crisis, making the phenomenon invisible and causing severe unmet needs.
● Rising risks: Protracted violence is not a stable crisis. The data show territorial expansion, new forms of affectation and a growing deterioration in certain groups. Treating this reality as a chronic and immutable situation leads to insufficient responses to increasing risks.
● Violence and its consequences on prioritization in humanitarian programming: The current discussion should not only focus on the structural causes of violence, nor on understanding the phenomenon as a single development problem, but on recognizing its immediate humanitarian consequences. Where risk exposure is combined with high severity and low response, humanitarian action must concentrate resources and capacities.