The Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris, launched this Tuesday (7) an initiative to promote gender equality in Central America, hoping that creating more opportunities for women will result in a decrease in irregular migration.

During a side event at the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, the vice president also announced new commitments from the private sector to invest an additional $1.9 billion in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.

“When we provide economic opportunity to people in Central America, we address a major driver of migration to the United States,” Harris said.

The focus on women

With the arrival of undocumented immigrants at the southern border of the United States on the rise and while a caravan of nearly 15,000 migrants continues its advance through southern Mexico, the vice president wanted to focus on the need to improve opportunities for women in the region.

Harris presented In her hands, an initiative that aims to connect more than 1.4 million women in Central America and other Latin American countries to the financial system and the digital economy, as well as accelerate female participation in the agricultural industry.

The project also seeks to train more than 500,000 women and girls in basic job skills, through a new Gender Equity Center created by the CARE organization, endowed with 50 million dollars, and expected to have its headquarters in Guatemala.

Promoting gender parity and encouraging women to be given more responsibility in companies are two other axes of the initiative, supported by funds from companies such as Mastercard, Microsoft, and PepsiCo.

“When we raise the economic status of women, we raise the economic status of their families, their communities, and our entire continent,” Harris said.

Women make up more than half of the population in the Northern Triangle and are the main breadwinner in the vast majority of single-parent households, according to a recent analysis by the independent Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA).

Reduce Gender Violence

Within her plan to create “an ecosystem of opportunities for women” in Central America, Harris highlighted the need to work with civil society to “reduce gender-based violence in the region.”

The Northern Triangle of Central America has some of the highest femicide rates in the world, with 13.8 femicides per 100,000 inhabitants in El Salvador in 2017, according to UN data, although many cases of sexist violence and sexual abuse go unreported.

That same violence forces many women from the Northern Triangle to flee to other places, including the United States.

“When women do not have financial stability, the data shows that they are more likely to stay in abusive relationships,” the vice president recalled, adding that economic opportunities can lead to “a reduction in gender-based violence .”

The US development agency, USAID, plans to invest 6.5 million dollars in Guatemala and 2.7 million in Honduras to give resources to survivors of gender-based violence and improve their access to security and justice, respectively.