The Diplomat
The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, will participate tomorrow in San José, Costa Rica, together with the Costa Rican and Guatemalan presidents and the multilateral organizations UNHCR and OAS, in a high-level solidarity event to mobilize international support for the victims of forced displacement in Central America and Mexico.
The event has been convened by Spain, which currently holds the presidency of the Platform to Support the Regional Integrated Framework for Protection and Solutions (MIRPS), in the framework of the tour initiated by Pedro Sánchez through Ibero-America, which began yesterday in Argentina and will continue tomorrow in Costa Rica.
Also collaborating in the organization of the event, which will highlight the responses of Central American countries and Mexico to the phenomenon of forced displacement and seek to mobilize international support and commitments for the member states of the MIRPS, are the governments of Costa Rica, as pro-tempore Chair of the Central American Integration System (SICA), and Guatemala, as pro-tempore Chair of the MIRPS, with the support of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the Organization of American States (OAS), in its capacity as Technical Secretariat of the MIRPS.
The event will be attended by Pedro Sánchez, the President of Costa Rica, Carlos Alvarado; the President of Guatemala, Alejandro Giammattei; the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi; and the Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS). In addition, several presidents or ministers of the other MIRPS countries and other countries committed to the region will speak, as well as representatives of civil society, other UN agencies, multilateral institutions and the private sector.
The MIRPS brings together Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and Panama with the humanitarian objective of addressing the needs of people forced to flee and the communities that host them. In addition, the MIRPS Support Platform, which includes Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, France, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United States and the European Union, is mobilizing new partnerships to seek durable solutions for displaced persons in Central America and to increase protection activities in MIRPS countries. UNHCR and the OAS are members of the MIRPS technical secretariat to provide technical and political assistance to member states to enable them to respond effectively to the current challenges of forced displacement in the region.
Sánchez will travel tomorrow to San José, Costa Rica, from Argentina, to participate in the commemorative events of the thirtieth anniversary of SICA and meet with the leaders of the Central American countries, with whom he will address bilateral issues, the plight of refugees, the challenge of migration, displacement aggravated by the pandemic and the consequences of climate change, such as hurricanes. In San José he will coincide with the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Arancha González Laya, who today will participate in the meeting of SICA foreign ministers and will meet with her Costa Rican counterpart, Rodolfo Solan.
