Context

Mexico faces a humanitarian paradox. In 2025, 15,172 migrant girls, boys, and adolescents entered the country. Although this figure is lower than in previous years, REDIM warns that it does not reflect an improvement in their rights, but rather a regional hardening of policies that exacerbates the vulnerability of children. The LGDNNA prohibits their detention and mandates referral to the DIF, but 90% of shelters are managed by civil society and operate on the brink of collapse, with overcrowding and insufficient resources. Faced with the gap between the law and its enforcement, the safe spaces methodology becomes the structural pillar that upholds the protection of children on the move.

Methodology

The construction of safe spaces is based on a systemic and adaptive approach, structured around four operational axes:

1. Early detection and referral. Shelters channel NNA to the DIF, the Protection Attorney’s Office, and COMAR, preventing them from becoming entangled in criminal migration proceedings.
2. Integrated multidimensional care. It combines health services, legal support, psychosocial care, recreational and cultural areas, and training within a single space, closing gaps in comprehensive care.
3. Horizontal inter-institutional coordination. It promotes referral networks and joint protocols among civil society organizations, with regular meetings and shared codes of good practices based on a trauma-informed and child protection approach.
4. Contextual adaptation of the European model. The SafeSpaces program takes up European elements and reformulates them with Latin American case studies, adjusting language and tools to limited resources and local legal frameworks, without losing the conceptual rigor of complex systems thinking.

Results and impact

The methodology demonstrates that coordination prevents collapse. Spaces that apply it reduce duplication of efforts and strengthen trust among overstretched teams. Training in systemic thinking has created a common language that allows organizations to view themselves as part of a protection chain, rather than as isolated islands. Local networks have been formalized that, although fragile, manage to demand accountability from the State. The comprehensiveness of services (medical, legal, and psychological) has reduced revictimization and streamlined access to refugee procedures. However, the impact hits a structural limit: the State’s institutional weakness in coordinating with civil society, which maintains an abysmal gap between protocols and their daily implementation.

Conclusions

The methodology shows that comprehensive protection cannot be decreed; it must be built from the local level. In the face of migration hardening and state saturation, the systemic approach offers a clear roadmap: coordination, comprehensiveness, and contextual adaptation. As REDIM points out, common standards and transnational protection mechanisms are needed, but they will only be effective if they stem from local experience and network work. The immediate challenge is to institutionalize these practices, ensuring that the State does not shirk its responsibility, but rather joins an alliance that, although fragile, remains the only guarantee of dignity for migrant children in Mexico.

By Edgar Alan Nolasco Rogel, Project Coordinator, Scalabrini Foundation

Abbreviations:

• NNA: Girls, Boys, and Adolescents.
• DIF: National System for Integral Family Development.
• COMAR: Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance.
• REDIM: Network for the Rights of Children in Mexico.
• LGDNNA: General Law on the Rights of Girls, Boys, and Adolescents.
• Segob: Secretariat of the Interior.

Sources consulted:

• Unidad de Política Migratoria, Segob. Statistical Bulletins 2025.
• Network for the Rights of Children in Mexico (REDIM). «Migrant girls, boys and adolescents in Mexico (as of March 2025)», May 21, 2025.
• General Law on the Rights of Girls, Boys and Adolescents (LGDNNA).
• KIND (Kids in Need of Defense). «Master Plan 2024: Priorities for children on the move», September 2025.