Save the Children Calls for Urgent Action to Protect Children on the Move from Central America to the United States: Save the Children Position Paper

Children from Guatemala, Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras and other Central American nations have been migrating to the United States for years. However, their numbers increased dramatically beginning in late 2013. Between October 2013 and May 2014, nearly 50,000 children, many unaccompanied, arrived at the U.S. border. This was a 92 percent increase from the prior year, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Projections have suggested that the number of children arriving will increase to between 60,000 and 90,000 by the end of 2014.

Save the Children calls on the governments involved to act to: strengthen national child protection systems; conduct individual assessments and evaluations of the best interests of the child at all stages of any migration process; meet the needs of children at the border; and to address the root causes for the migration surge and not focus solely on its symptoms.