Children in the jungle

Darien Jungle is the last place on earth where a child should be. According to Unicef , 19,000 migrant children have crossed the Darian Gap separating Colombia and Panama between January and September of this year. In 2017, they had numbered “only” 109. The United Nations has described this year’s figures as intolerable. They are young migrants on their own, accompanied or orphaned along the way, often holding the hands of their younger siblings, whom they have to defend from wild animals, feed and provide with often unsanitary water. Their path goes through the most hostile jungle on the planet which intersects the “umbilical chord” between the Americas, the Isthmus of Panama. The harsh natural environment is made worse by the presence of drug traffickers, smugglers, kidnappers and rapists. It is one of the most cruel global migration ...