Site Visit 2

In the “Río Azul” community, there was a meeting with Nicaraguan-led emerging movements with specific spaces for dialogue and exchange of experiences, their challenges, and their opportunities. Emerging movements include feminist, domestic worker, and LGTBIQ+ rights collectives, among others.

At first, some general context was given about the situation of migrants in Costa Rica. Upon arrival at Río Azul, we went to La Cometa, a Municipal Human Development Center located in Tirrases. This is a community space to meet and exchange, where people learn about an academic, cultural, educational, and personal-growth aspect.

Afterwards, there was a presentation and a tour of the Tirrases community, where the former landfill was. The walk ended at La Libertad park—a human development and social inclusion space that aims at improving the quality of life of nearby communities through their economic, social, and environmental development, providing opportunities for their technical, artistic, cultural and environmental education.

Once there, three groups were formed to discuss and delve into “Joint Responsibility and Service Reconfiguration: New Actors Working with People on the Move.” The organizations that shared their experiences were:

1. Asociación Enlaces Nicaragüenses: Civil society organization working with Nicaraguan women, mainly domestic workers, supporting their integration into the country, regularization, training, among others.

2. Colectiva Volcánicas: Feminist collective positioning and giving visibility to migrant women’s rights. Las Volcánicas are migrant, exiled, diverse women. They work in Costa Rican territories on migration and feminisms. One of the main political proposals at a collective level is political healing and the humanization of migrations.

3. Colectivo de Derechos Humanos Nicaragua Nunca +: A collective committed to the full validity of human rights, supporting victims of human rights violations in truth, justice, reparation, and guarantees of non-repetition processes, through documentation, national and international reports, national and international network and partnership articulation, use of international human rights protection mechanisms, and information systematization actions that allow to build the Nicaraguan historic memory.