Joyas XXL
Este 2024, las joyas gigantescas son una tendencia de moda global, en la Feria de Abril de Sevilla también. La diseñadora Carmen Marcos, fundadora de CCM Complementos, tiene las claves: "además de los chokers, que son los reyes en Instagram, también vamos a ver pendientes que cuelgan y caen sobre los hombros con cierto aire vintage y creaciones con formas florales. Piezas que además, una vez pasada la feria, pueden utilizarse sin miedo en otros eventos".
Uno de los símbolos de la indumentaria tradicional de flamenca son los volantes y sí, se pueden lucir sin necesidad de enfundarse en un traje. "Por supuesto, para ir a la feria, un vestido midi con volantes o unos pantalones con volantes, funcionan fenomenal. Los volantes llevan varios años saliendo del propio traje de flamenca para dar más personalidad a diseños de fiesta y este 2024, los hemos propuesto en nuestros vestidos de invitada junto a tejidos con estampados propios, bien con lunares o bien con combinaciones de colores vibrantes", explica Carmen Fitz.
The Darién Gap migration crisis in six graphs, and one map
A record 520,000 migrants crossed the treacherous jungle corridor connecting Colombia and Panamá – known as the Darién Gap – in 2023. Less than a decade ago, that figure was only a few thousand, but the number has been doubling annually in recent years, and a further surge is expected in 2024.
“2023 has broken all records. It has been a huge, terrible maelstrom,” Elías Cornejo, who runs Fe y Alegría, an NGO promoting education and social advancement for migrants in Panamá, told The New Humanitarian. “And we expect a new increase [in 2024].”
Services like Fe y Alegría – on both sides of the Colombia-Panama border – are becoming engulfed as the needs of vast numbers of vulnerable people traversing dangerous territory overwhelm local communities and aid groups trying to help.
The migrants take the 97-kilometre jungle trek – over steep and muddy terrain and along fast-flowing rivers – because it is the only overland route from South America into Central America. Once in Panamá, where government reception centres are overrun, most hope to head northwards through Mexico to the southern US border, but these journeys are also full of risks.
Read more: The challenges facing the humanitarian response
The few humanitarian agencies and organisations operating on the ground in and around the Darién Gap are struggling to meet the soaring needs of those crossing, not least because of the insecurity in the region.
Diana Romero, emergency specialist at UNICEF Panamá, told The New Humanitarian that coming up with the right emergency response hasn't been easy in a high-income country that was unprepared to deal with such needs. “Panama had not faced situations of disasters or crises, so they didn´t have the implementation partners needed,” she said. “In 2019, there were no local humanitarian teams, because there never was a demand for that. There were no specialists in WASH, gender, or nutrition.”
The number of children crossing has also soared
According to Diana Romero, emergency specialist at UNICEF Panamá, one in five migrants crossing the Darién is a child – half of them under the age of five. Although there are no accurate figures, there are many reports of children dying during the trek. The number of unaccompanied children is of particular concern. In 2022, UNICEF assisted about 1,000 unaccompanied minors, but in 2023 that figure reached 3,300. Of those, 67% were teenagers, 21% children aged between 6 and 12, and of the rest, 10% are babies, Romero said. Often, younger children get separated from their relatives during the trek only managing to reunite later on. According to Francisco Pulido, Plan International´s director of humanitarian action and stabilisation in Colombia, teenagers tend to travel in friend groups – often motivated by misinformation shared on social media. In other cases, the entire family cannot afford to continue the trek so parents leave their children in camps, hoping to send them money to follow on later.
Most of the medical cases that aid organisations come across and treat are related to the dangers of the jungle itself, or due to the lack of access to clean water and food en route. There’s no data available, but humanitarian groups say there has also been a rising number of migrants travelling with pre-existing chronic conditions – psychiatric disorders, diabetes, hypertension, or asthma. These people often require emergency assistance because their medications get lost or stolen.
Entrevistamos a Ibon Zugasti: "La vida de monje es súper importante"
Con un lenguaje original y el reality por bandera, Ibon Zugasti se ha convertido en uno de los ciclistas más conocidos de nuestro país.
Su canal de YouTube estrena un nuevo vídeo cada semana y ya suma más de 270.000 seguidores. Pero el fenómeno Zugasti ha saltado todas las banderas y sus frases y mensajes los utilizan desde ciclistas profesionales hasta políticos. Aunque no es muy dado a las entrevistas, nos dio la oportunidad de hablar con él y conocerle mejor.