Migrant flows and self-governance

Anti-corruption reforms in Honduras and Guatemala point to the role of honesty in reducing the drivers of human flight.

The Monitor's View

Greece has seen a threefold increase in the number of migrants reaching its shores illegally this year. In Italy, illegal arrivals have almost doubled. Across the southern United States, nearly 9,000 people have been slipping through gaps in the border daily in recent weeks. These mass flows of humanity are adding new urgency to the international community’s focus on what compels people to risk perilous journeys in search of uncertain futures.

“We must recognize that solutions to irregular migration cannot solely rely on preventing departures, but also on ensuring that we are effectively addressing the various drivers of migration in countries of origin, transit and, oftentimes, in countries of initial destination,” Pär Liljert, director of the International Organization for Migration’s office to the United Nations, told the U.N. Security Council yesterday.

Two countries of migrant origin in Central America are now showing that stemming the flight of their citizens starts with ending corruption and impunity. In Guatemala, President-elect Bernardo Arévalo is butting heads with public prosecutors, judges, and lawyers bent on annulling his upset ballot victory in August. In neighboring Honduras, President Xiomara Castro is trying to transform a political establishment long implicated by graft, including ties with drug traffickers.

A World Bank study published this month shows the correlation between corruption and migration. Using a model based on four measures of corruption, the study found that every one-unit increase in a country’s overall corruption level resulted in an 11% increase in migrant outflow, “while the same increase in the destination country is associated with a 10% decline in in-migration.”

Those findings are confirmed by a deep desire among ordinary people in both Guatemala and Honduras for honest governance and the security and economic opportunities that flow from it. In the latest AmericasBarometer survey in Guatemala, conducted just before the August election, 76% of citizens surveyed said that more than half of the country’s politicians engage in corrupt activities. Mr. Arévalo promised a big broom. His victory marked a popular rejection of fear and resignation. “The first job was to defeat defeatism,” Sandra Morán, a once-exiled former member of Congress who voted for Mr. Arévalo, told The Intercept earlier this month.

That mental shift from within may be more powerful than any offer of help from outside the source countries of migration. “Corruption is the system,” Claudia Escobar, a former Guatemalan appeals court judge, told the Council on Foreign Relations last week. “And this will only change when the countries decide that they want to implement a different system.”

Both countries are showing that when the fear of corruption breaks, virtuous cycles begin to form. In Guatemala, judges – a professional class with deep alleged ties to corruption – have rejected efforts by the attorney general, herself the target of U.S. economic sanctions for “involvement in significant corruption,” to vacate Mr. Arévalo’s ballot victory. In Honduras, even Ms. Castro’s opponents in parliament have grudgingly backed legislative reforms meant to counter impunity.

At each step, the public has been watching. “They are saying that we are coming to defend Arévalo,” Sandra Calel, an Indigenous activist who joined a protest rally against the attorney general in Guatemala last week, told The Associated Press, “but we are really coming to defend democracy, which is what the people elected. Because we are tired of so much corruption.”

Two points of migrant origin in Central America are charting new routes to the rights of the self-governed – and perhaps more reasons to stay at home.