- Article 8: Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.
One of the most difficult situations I find myself in is sitting with a grown man who is crying. When I am with a woman there is usually a different connection, I can cry with her, hold her, relate in a deeper way. For some reason, this is more complicated with a man. I remember sitting with Luís, who was just a few years older than myself, as tears ran down his face and he repeated “La vida es dura. Tan dura” (Life is hard. So hard). He rested for a night, then continued walking north. A few hours later he found his way back to our camp after having been robbed of everything we had given him – food, water, a backpack – by bandits a few miles away.
Impunity is commonplace along the migrant trail. Many of the people I talk to have been robbed at gunpoint at some point of their journey, whether in México before crossing, right at the border, or somewhere in the remoteness of the desert, where no one is there to care. What recourse does a person without money or connections, let alone documentation authorizing her to be in this country, have?
One of the most difficult situations I find myself in is sitting with a grown man who is crying. When I am with a woman there is usually a different connection, I can cry with her, hold her, relate in a deeper way. For some reason, this is more complicated with a man. I remember sitting with Luís, who was just a few years older than myself, as tears ran down his face and he repeated “La vida es dura. Tan dura” (Life is hard. So hard). He rested for a night, then continued walking north. A few hours later he found his way back to our camp after having been robbed of everything we had given him – food, water, a backpack – by bandits a few miles away.
Impunity is commonplace along the migrant trail. Many of the people I talk to have been robbed at gunpoint at some point of their journey, whether in México before crossing, right at the border, or somewhere in the remoteness of the desert, where no one is there to care. What recourse does a person without money or connections, let alone documentation authorizing her to be in this country, have?
- Article 23: Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
“Chiapas es hermosa, pero no hay dinero.” Chiapas is beautiful, but there is no money. Or work. I sat with Jesus, a father of two small children from Southern México, and listened to the words I have heard so many times. Because of the lack of employment in his home community, Jesus, along with his wife Sara, decided to make the journey north with their two small children. When I met their family they were all in fairly bad shape. Sara had terrible blisters on her feet, making it all but impossible for her to walk. Their four-year-old son had drunk the cow tank water and spent a morning vomiting in our camp, his tiny body limp with misery. I wonder what would have happened to them if we hadn’t come across each other that morning. When I reflect on the tremendous cost the journey had for this family, I find it difficult to imagine that they would have chosen to undertake it if there was a way that they could have sustained themselves in Chiapas.
- Article 25: (1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
How many would migrate if these conditions were all met in their home countries? Who is responsible for the fact that they are so overwhelmingly not?
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