Vice President Harris launched the Root Causes Strategy on July 29, 2021, to align U.S. Government efforts to handle the financial, governance, and safety drivers of irregular migration from Central America. Tackling the persistent challenges that drive irregular migration requires sustained political will and cooperation throughout a broad vary of stakeholders to foster long-term growth in the area. The Vice President has led progress on the Administration’s Strategy, together with by touring to Guatemala, Mexico, and Honduras to launch new initiatives that sustainably deal with the root causes of migration.
Recognizing the necessary function for the non-public sector, Vice President Harris introduced collectively non-public sector leaders by means of a Call to Action, which has resulted in over $1.2 billion in non-public sector commitments in Central America to create new jobs and alternatives for folks in the area. Vice President Harris additionally engaged companions round the world to help our work and generate new commitments.
The Biden-Harris Administration’s technique represents a complete method to selling inclusive financial development in the area with a pointy focus on strengthening democratic governance and combatting corruption, girls’s empowerment, local weather change, human rights, safety and curbing gender-based violence. It integrates numerous U.S. Government instruments, together with international help, growth finance, public diplomacy, and financial sanctions and visa restrictions. Because the area’s long-term growth would require extra than simply the sources of the U.S. Government, the Strategy forges robust partnerships with the non-public sector and worldwide companions.
Mobilizing Private Sector Investment
The Vice President’s management has introduced collectively non-public sector leaders by means of a Call to Action. In collaboration with the Partnership for Central America, this has resulted in greater than $1.2 billion in non-public sector commitments in Central America to create new jobs and alternatives for folks in the area. The Call to Action’s six focus areas are meant to help long-term growth of the area. They are: selling a reform agenda; digital and monetary inclusion; meals safety and climate-smart agriculture; local weather adaptation and clear power; schooling and workforce growth; and public well being entry.
Companies which have made investments and commitments in the area embrace Microsoft, Nespresso, Mastercard, CARE International, Cargill, Grupo Mariposa, Parkdale Mills, PepsiCo, JDE Peet’s, and PriceSmart. These preliminary commitments are already bearing fruit. Some highlights embrace:
- Internet Access: Microsoft catalyzed the growth of digital entry coaching facilities, clear off-grid power, and broadband entry protecting a inhabitants of 1.1 million folks, and is on observe to attach 4 million folks to broadband by 2024.
- Support for Farmers: Nespresso works with over 1,200 farms in Guatemala to enhance livelihoods in the area. The firm introduced its first-ever espresso sourcing from Honduras and El Salvador, with plans to extend actions in the area for the subsequent harvest season. This is a component of the firm’s dedication to help the area’s economic system with a minimal of $150 million to be spent throughout espresso purchases, value premiums, and technical help by 2025.
- Digital and Financial Inclusion: Mastercard dedicated to carry 5 million folks in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras into the formal monetary economic system and to digitize a million micro and small companies. The firm established a Digital Country Partnership with Guatemala’s Ministry of the Economy, accelerating their work to carry 5 million folks in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras into the formal monetary economic system. This can even allow a million micro and small companies to entry on-line fee and administration methods.
- Job Creation and Supply Chain Resilience: Parkdale Mills is investing $150 million in a brand new yarn spinning facility in Honduras. This help will present prospects with sources for buying a million kilos of yarn per week inside the area whereas growing U.S. provide chain resilience. The funding is meant to help roughly 500 workers at every location and enhance oblique job development in Honduras and in the United States, significantly in the U.S. cotton business throughout 18 states. The funding additionally consists of $24 million in new investments in photo voltaic power, water recapture, and power environment friendly HVAC methods.
- Infrastructure and Renewable Energy Investments: PepsiCo will make investments at the very least $190 million in northern Central America by means of 2025. The firm’s deliberate investments embrace enhancements to its infrastructure and manufacturing crops; enlargement of new distribution routes; IT tasks; and investments aligned with its “pep+” (PepsiCo Positive) agenda. This consists of spreading regenerative farming practices throughout seven million acres (which is roughly the dimension of the firm’s whole agricultural footprint), turning into Net Water Positive by 2030 by lowering absolute water use and replenishing watersheds, and reaching net-zero emissions by 2040 by growing the use of renewable power, amongst different efforts.
- Support for Small Businesses: Grupo Mariposa will present over 70,000 small-business house owners with entry to credit score and digital companies. It can even help 3,500 small and medium-enterprises with entry to telemedicine, schooling, and Internet connectivity, impacting greater than 200,000 folks and increasing healthcare and telemedicine options to 2,000 distant communities. In addition, it would make investments greater than $10 million to develop its espresso footprint, creating greater than 500 new jobs and supporting greater than 400 small and medium-sized espresso producers to extend productiveness and earnings potential.
- CARE introduced its plans to ascertain a $50 million Center for Gender Equity in Central America targeted on girls and younger folks and designed to achieve 500,000 particular person girls and their households, impacting two million folks in whole. The Center will help private and non-private applications in the area – scaling up people who work – to help monetary inclusion, girls’s financial empowerment (together with in the safety of labor rights and in supporting entrepreneurship), improved agricultural outcomes, and reductions in gender-based violence. In explicit, CARE will help corporations becoming a member of the Call to Action with technical help to make sure that a gender-based lens is utilized to new applications and funding.
Creating Economic Opportunity
- Job Creation: In Fiscal Year 2021, USAID help to personal sector companies in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras helped create greater than 70,000 jobs, spurred $415 million in gross sales, and supported agricultural producers to realize entry to $860 million in financing. In Honduras, USAID helped set up a brand new $20 million mortgage facility to lend to underserved agricultural purchasers, particularly girls agribusiness house owners.
- Mobilizing Investment: Through USAID’s Guatemalan Entrepreneurship and Development Innovation initiative, introduced by Vice President Harris in June 2021, USAID has leveraged $59 million, in opposition to its $7.5 million funding, from worldwide and native non-public sector companions to scale technology-driven, market-led options to crucial growth challenges all through the nation.
- Public-Private Partnerships: U.S. Government advocacy contributed to Guatemala’s first public-private partnership (PPP) venture in November 2021, which can lengthen and restore the freeway that connects the capital with the nation’s main Pacific port, Puerto Quetzal, and may function a mannequin for different infrastructure funding and assist Guatemalans carry their merchandise to the world market. The U.S. Trade and Development Agency (USTDA), in December 2021, awarded a feasibility examine grant to develop a PPP that will set up LED streetlights alongside greater than 500 kilometers of freeway throughout El Salvador to enhance security, enhance power effectivity, and decrease power prices. These PPPs can function highly effective fashions for future infrastructure funding collaboration in the area.
- Access to Finance: In October 2021, the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) disbursed $100 million to the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (CABEI) to fund monetary establishment intermediaries in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras which can then lend to micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) to help financial restoration in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The DFC, with USAID funding, offered further mortgage ensures to entities in El Salvador and Honduras to boost lending to women-led small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and SMEs in excessive development sectors of the economic system to help financial development and job creation inside traditionally marginalized communities. In September 2021, USAID finalized a brand new mortgage assure that’s facilitating entry to loans for SMEs in the Western Highlands of Guatemala, a area with excessive ranges of out-migration.
- Trade Facilitation: In August 2021, the Department of Commerce’s Commercial Law Development Program (CLDP) and International Trade Administration (ITA) performed a regional commerce facilitation workshop with Guatemalan customs and commerce ministries. In May and June of 2022, CLDP will host two workshops in Honduras on customs valuation and communication. These workshops are half of a multiphase effort to advertise transparency, cooperation, and coordination amongst the northern Central American governments and enhance inter-regional commerce.
Strengthening Health and Education
- Vaccine Doses: To help folks in the area in combating the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. Government has delivered greater than 15 million free-of-cost vaccine doses bilaterally and in partnership with COVAX to international locations in northern Central America. Vaccination charges are steadily growing in all three international locations with Guatemala at 33 %, Honduras at 46 %, and El Salvador at 66 % of their populations finishing the preliminary COVID-19 vaccination protocol.
- Vaccine Financing: In September 2021, the DFC, in conjunction with Citigroup Inc., offered a threat administration resolution to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, to mitigate threat and overcome monetary hurdles with governments which might be funding COVID-19 vaccine purchases by means of the COVAX Facility. Of the $383 million in political threat insurance coverage offered to Gavi, $50 million was offered to help allocation of vaccines to Guatemala.
- The U.S. Government has offered $26.4 million to El Salvador, $81.5 million to Guatemala, and $57.1 million to Honduras to help the combat in opposition to COVID-19 and strengthen well being methods. Assistance is supporting coaching well being care employees and public well being workers in crucial care administration and secure and efficient administration of vaccines, constructing laboratory capability, strengthening contact tracing efforts, sharing crucial data to stop the unfold of illness, offering technical help for the well being data methods wanted to guage vaccine distribution fairness and monitor vaccine security, and bolstering oxygen methods to make sure availability for sufferers who want them in Guatemala and Honduras.
- Education: In El Salvador in November 2021, USAID launched a $20 million Scholarships for Education Project to curb irregular migration by growing equitable entry to formal academic alternatives for 6,450 returnees and potential migrants. In Honduras, USAID put in Internet hotspots in 60 neighborhood studying facilities and elevated entry to distant studying for greater than 5,000 folks, together with greater than 600 returned migrant youngsters. USAID additionally accomplished repairs on and expansions to 2 colleges in western Honduras, which serve greater than 1,800 native college students in this space of excessive out-migration. In Guatemala, USAID offered schooling help to greater than 6,300 at-risk youth and launched new partnerships to strengthen English language applications.
Enhancing Climate Resilience and Food Security
- Humanitarian Assistance: Since April 2021, USAID reached roughly 1.9 million folks impacted by recurrent droughts, COVID-19, and extreme injury from Hurricanes Eta and Iota in northern Central America with life-saving humanitarian help reminiscent of emergency meals help, well being, livelihoods restoration, safety, shelter in addition to water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) help.
- Food Security: The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) offered $30 million to increase its Food for Progress program in Guatemala, which can allow it to achieve a further 18,000 producers. USDA offered $45 million to increase its McGovern-Dole college feeding, well being, vitamin, and academic programming in Guatemala and Honduras, reaching a further 124,000 beneficiaries, with a projection of practically 400,000 beneficiaries over the life of the program. In addition, in Fiscal Year 2021, USAID’s Feed the Future actions in Honduras immediately assisted practically 16,000 farm households and agribusinesses in adopting applied sciences to extend yields. This help contributed to over $23 million in incremental gross sales. In Guatemala, USAID’s Feed the Future actions created practically 30,000 jobs and over $76 million in gross sales whereas leveraging over $10 million in financing and $6 million in funding in the agricultural sector.
Combating Corruption
- Anti-Corruption Task Force: In June 2021, Vice President Harris introduced the institution of the Department of Justice’s Anti-Corruption Task Force (ACTF). The ACTF subsequently created a brand new tip line for reporting corruption in the area and the FBI has reviewed and adopted up on the ensuing suggestions. The ACTF continues to function the tip line and depends on relationships with counterparts, witnesses, cooperators and others in the area to streamline and prioritize investigations. In addition, the quantity of Department of Justice Resident Legal Advisors (RLAs), supported by the Department of State, was elevated all through the area, and RLAs proceed to work with their counterparts in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. In November 2021, an RLA-assisted Honduran anti-corruption unit secured responsible verdicts in opposition to the former minister of well being and former minister of labor on fees of embezzlement, bribery, fraud, and cash laundering.
- Sanctions and Visa Restrictions: In December 2021, the Department of the Treasury imposed sanctions on officers in El Salvador and Guatemala in reference to public corruption pursuant to the Global Magnitsky sanctions program, which permits for the focusing on of corruption and severe human rights abuse. In addition, the Department of State publicly designated a number of Guatemalan and Salvadoran officers beneath Section 7031(c) of the Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act for their involvement in important corruption, typically rendering them and their rapid relations ineligible for entry into the United States. Prior to those actions, the Department of State publicly included a number of present and former officers and personal people on the Section 353 Corrupt and Undemocratic Actors List typically rendering these people ineligible for visas and admission to the United States. In August 2021, the United States additionally launched a brand new visa restriction authority beneath Section 212(1)(3)(C) of the Immigration and Nationality Act on the issuance of visas to present or former Guatemalan, Honduran, or Salvadoran authorities officers and different people believed to be accountable for, or complicit in, undermining democracy or the rule of regulation.
- Audit and Oversight: To promote transparency and combat corruption, USAID skilled 100 auditors in Guatemala’s Specialized Center for Tax and Customs Crimes to raised determine tax crimes, donated pc gear for use in subject audits, and offered technical help on the documentation of felony complaints. With USAID help, the Center has recovered practically $80 million in tax income since its inception.
Advancing Democracy, Promoting the Rule of Law, and Protecting Human Rights
- Democratic Elections: The Department of State and USAID engaged all ranges of Honduran society and the authorities forward of the November 2021 presidential election to advertise free, honest, and peaceable elections that mirrored the will of Honduran voters. USAID help helped facilitate the nation’s election by means of help to journalists and civil society organizations to objectively report on details about the election course of, unbiased analyses that knowledgeable suggestions on elections safety, and get out the vote campaigns. USAID additionally supported the strengthening of electoral administration our bodies. The Department of State supported coaching for cops in advance of the elections, together with content material on the use of power and related election legal guidelines and procedures, and distributed 20,000 election day pocket guides to cops emphasizing the significance of respecting the rights of all residents to vote. The election, characterised by excessive voter turnout, resulted in the peaceable election of the nation’s first lady president.
- Across the northern Central American international locations, the Department of State and USAID labored collectively to advertise human rights, labor rights, and press freedom. USAID elevated sources to answer rising safety wants, offering crucial help to journalists, human rights defenders, and anti-corruption champions. USAID offered well timed help to greater than 30 human rights defenders and democracy advocates in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. To reply to excessive charges of extortion, human trafficking, and violence amongst marginalized sexual and gender minority people, USAID supported LGBTQI+ civil society organizations to handle regressive insurance policies and advocate for reforms to key legal guidelines. In Honduras, this included advocating for transgender people to have the ability to legally register beneath their chosen names, somewhat than the names on their delivery certificates beneath the regulation governing the National Persons Registry. A public petition garnered greater than 4,000 signatures earlier than submission to the Honduran National Congress in November 2021. As the Congress considers its response, LGBTQI+ advocacy teams are engaged in associated advocacy and coverage efforts to additional promote crucial protections. In addition, U.S. Southern Command’s Human Rights Initiative has efforts in all three northern Central American international locations, serving to to institutionalize respect for human rights in accomplice nation armed forces doctrine {and professional} schooling.
- New Technical Assistance to Promote Labor Rights: The Department of Labor (DOL) not too long ago introduced $20 million in new applications in northern Central America. Activities will focus on growing collective motion to handle little one and compelled labor and enhance occupational security and well being situations of employees in the area. Efforts additionally will enhance the potential of employees to train their labor rights in agricultural provide chains in Guatemala and Honduras and the textile/attire sector in El Salvador.
- Labor Roundtables: In June and July 2021, DOL hosted 9 labor roundtables, convening over 50 unions and civil society organizations from the United States, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras to debate the nexus between labor points and migration.
Combating Crime and Increasing Security
- Human Smuggling: In June 2021, Vice President Harris introduced the creation of a regional activity power to determine, disrupt, and forestall migrant smuggling and human trafficking operations.Working with companions in the area, the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security’s Joint Task Force Alpha, which targets human smuggling, continues to determine and pursue precedence human smuggling instances for prosecution inside the United States. Department of Justice RLAs, with Department of State help, are working with counterparts in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras to pursue investigations and prosecutions. In November 2021, prosecutors mentored by RLAs obtained indictments in opposition to twenty members of a human smuggling group (HSO) that operated all through El Salvador and Guatemala. In a coordinated effort, Guatemalan police and prosecutors additionally executed search warrants at 5 places linked to the identical HSO. In January 2022, as half of one other coordinated investigation with DHS’s Homeland Security Investigations, Guatemalan authorities executed 19 search warrants, seized over $200,000, and arrested ten Guatemalan nationals for violations of international regulation associated to human smuggling and cash laundering. In Honduras, U.S. authorities efforts resulted in the formation of a migration activity power to focus on investigation and prosecution of smuggling and trafficking networks. Since January 2021 this and different border safety applications have resulted in the arrest of 283 alleged human smugglers, the rescue of 200 minors, and a tripling in the quantity of migrants checked in opposition to U.S. felony and terrorist databases.
- Money Laundering: In November 2021, U.S.-mentored prosecutors in Honduras secured cash laundering convictions in opposition to seven Honduran nationals who had been high-level members of the Byron Ruiz drug trafficking group beforehand convicted of aggravated drug trafficking fees in Honduras.
- Civilian Law Enforcement: The Department of State labored to professionalize safety forces throughout the area by coaching greater than 5,000 civilian police in calendar 12 months 2021 on subjects reminiscent of neighborhood policing, investigations, and human rights.
- Conventional Weapons Destruction: In 2021, the Department of State offered explosive ordnance disposal and stockpile administration coaching to 86 safety forces personnel, destroyed 7.91 metric tons of out of date munitions, and offered bodily safety upgrades to weak weapons storage amenities in El Salvador and Guatemala to stop the illicit pilferage and proliferation of State-held weapons which contribute to armed violence and felony exercise in the area.
- Regional Information Sharing: The Department of State supported a regional effort to share felony intelligence about transnational felony organizations and related criminals in Central America, with a spotlight on migrant smuggling and human trafficking. In 2021, this effort facilitated the identification of practically 1,200 members of transnational felony organizations.
- Reinsertion of Former Offenders: In El Salvador, USAID supported an modern and evidence-based reinsertion mannequin for grownup and youth populations exiting jail and gang-involvement, which in the final 12 months has led to a 70 % success fee of individuals receiving employment or constantly taking part in ability constructing help and never re-offending.
Focusing on Women and Youth
- Gender-Based Violence: In February 2022, USAID awarded a $5 million grant to El Refugio de la Niñez, a Guatemalan NGO, to increase schooling, authorized, housing, medical, psychosocial and different companies to survivors of trafficking in individuals and unaccompanied migrant youngsters. In September 2021, the Department of State supported the design and implementation of a specialised course for Honduran prosecutors on gender-based violence, together with home violence, which launched with an preliminary class of 25 prosecutors in February 2022. U.S. help helps the Honduran National Police revamp its coaching curriculum to focus on incidents of gender-based violence and prepare 911 operators on how one can prioritize and route the greater than 60 stories of such violence every day. U.S. applications are additionally considerably growing post-violence sufferer help and sources.
- Young Women’s Empowerment: With the June 2021 launch of its $40 million Young Women’s Empowerment Initiative, USAID is partnering with Guatemalan indigenous and girls’s organizations, non-public sector, and worldwide organizations to extend schooling, skilled coaching, and income-generating alternatives for 1000’s of indigenous Guatemalan girls and ladies.
- Women Entrepreneurs: The Department of State’s Academy of Women Entrepreneurs (AWE) program in northern Central America offers girls individuals the information, networks, and entry to launch and scale their companies by means of a confirmed mixture of enterprise lessons, skilled mentoring, and seed cash. In September 2021, Honduras added 315 new individuals and in November 2021, Guatemala graduated a category of 120 girls, together with representatives from highland and Afro-Guatemalan Garifuna communities with excessive charges of emigration, whereas El Salvador graduated a category of 176 girls, 36 of whom obtained $24,000 in seed capital to take a position additional in their companies and create jobs in their communities.
- Advancing Women’s Economic Empowerment: On January 4, 2022, USAID launched the MujerProspera (WomenProsper) problem, looking for options that advance girls’s financial safety, employment, and/or entrepreneurship in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. With this problem, USAID expects to subject as much as 14 awards every valued between $150,000 and $500,000 later this spring.
- At-Risk Youth: Since July 2021, USAID has offered psychosocial help and household counseling, gender-based violence prevention actions, life-skills coaching, vocational workshops, digital inclusion, sports activities and humanities actions, and different schooling for youth overlooked of the formal schooling system for greater than 27,500 youngsters and youth in 80 high-crime and out-migration communities of the north, central, and western areas of Honduras. The Department of State labored with licensed Gang Resistance Education and Training (G.R.E.A.T.) instructors throughout Honduras to achieve greater than 100,000 youngsters and assist strengthen their potential to withstand gang recruitment. In El Salvador, USAID launched a $20 million alliance (which incorporates $10 million in non-public sector leverage) with native accomplice Glasswing International to enhance citizen safety in focused Salvadoran communities to assist cut back irregular migration, with a objective of reaching 30,000 folks (largely youth) in 5 years with financial and academic alternatives.
Enhancing Partnerships
- Engaging Local Organizations: In November 2021, USAID introduced Centroamérica Local, a five-year, $300 million initiative to empower native organizations in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras to handle the drivers of irregular migration to the United States.
- Cooperation with Mexico: In December 2021, the United States and Mexico introduced Sembrando Oportunidades, a brand new framework for growth cooperation to handle the root causes of irregular migration from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. These efforts are underway. In El Salvador, USAID is offering scholarships to graduates of Mexico’s youth workforce program, and in Honduras, USAID and its Mexican counterpart goal to achieve greater than 500,000 at-risk youth with abilities and expertise that may result in long-term employment.
Diplomatic Engagement Around the World to Address Root Causes
- The Vice President has acknowledged the have to internationalize her efforts, and has been rallying companions round the world to help U.S. efforts to handle the root causes of migration. The Vice President’s intensive diplomatic engagement with leaders round the world consists of the following necessary new commitments:
- Republic of Korea: After the Vice President met with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, the Republican of Korea doubled international help to northern Central America to $220 million over 5 years.
- Japan: The Government of Japan dedicated to nearer collaboration and has offered practically $22 million in help to the three international locations of northern Central America.
- Israel: The Israeli authorities introduced it might collaborate with USAID on agriculture, watershed administration, and violence prevention applications in Guatemala and Honduras.
The Vice President’s diplomacy helped set up the United Nations Humanitarian Response Plans for Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. She has labored with the European Union and Canada, which have turn out to be the largest donors to the effort after the United States.