The president of Panama, Laurentino Cortizo, said on Monday that he will participate in the UN Conference on Climate Change ( COP26 ) in Glasgow, next November, where he hopes to meet with his US colleague, Joe Biden, to speak on the crisis of the thousands of migrants traveling on foot to North America.
The Panamanian head of state “mentioned that this meeting on the climate is the opportunity to hold bilateral meetings with different leaders, and especially with President Biden, with whom he will talk about the irregular migration of Haitians,” an official statement reported.
Panama is the entrance to Central America from the south of the continent and it foresees that some 150,000 migrants in transit, the vast majority Haitian families, will have crossed the country at the end of this year, a historic figure, on their journey to North America, especially the United States.
Migrants arrive in the Central American country after having crossed the Darien jungle, one of the most dangerous migration routes in the world, which has been used for years by people from all over the world who travel to North America, with traffic peaks between 2015 and 2016. then of Cuban travelers, and now with the mobilization of tens of thousands of Haitians.
The Panamanian government sends migrants in transit to immigration stations where it takes their biometric data and offers them health care and food, in a unique operation in the region that has involved resources of about 20 million dollars, according to the data. officers.
Panama has insisted that “this is a regional problem,” because migrants cross land to a dozen countries, and therefore “the solutions have to be regional,” Cortizo said last October 20 in a meeting with his colleagues. from Costa Rica, Carlos Alvarado, and from the Dominican Republic, Luis Abinader.
“And we expect the US to participate much more effectively, with concrete measures, “ in solving the migration crisis, added Cortizo at the end of the trilateral meeting.
THE COP26
Cortizo said this Monday during a meeting with representatives of the different religions that live in Panama that it is “important” to attend the Climate Summit because “the world and the other presidents” must-know “the great effort that the Republic of Panama has made. “ in terms of conservation.
We must “tell them that we are one of the three countries (in the world classified as) negative carbon, “ said Cortizo, who will travel to Scotland on October 28 and return to Panama on November 3, according to official information.
The Government of Panama stressed that more than 100 heads of state will participate in COP26 and that the meeting should have been held in November 2020 but was postponed due to the covid-19 pandemic.
With 197 Parties, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has almost universal membership and is the precursor treaty to the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change.
The main goal of the Paris Agreement is to keep the global average temperature rise this century well below 2 C and to push efforts to further limit this rise to 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels.
The ultimate goal of all UNFCCC agreements is to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that prevents dangerous human interference in the climate system, within a time frame that allows ecosystems to adapt naturally and enable sustainable development.