Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, whether his Department is providing support to (a) Panama and (b) Colombia to help tackle changes in the level in migrants using the Darién Gap to enter the United States.

The UK is providing support to Panama through a £300,000 START Fund humanitarian response programme in response to a spike in cross-border migration between Colombia and Panama. The UK is the largest donor to the global START Fund, a key element of the FCDO's humanitarian response toolkit, allowing rapid funding to enable Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) to scale up activities in crisis situations. According to official Panamanian government figures, in the first three months of 2023 almost 80,0000 people crossed into Panama via the Darién, five times the number recorded the same time last year.