How many sexual assaults of migrants have Médecins Sans Frontières documented in the Darién Gap each year since 2021?
Executive summary
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has publicly reported specific totals for 2023—treating 676 survivors of sexual violence after they crossed the Darién Gap—and has provided numerous monthly and weekly tallies that reveal sharp spikes, including 214 cases in December 2023 [1] [2] [3] [4]. MSF and human-rights reporting do not provide a clear, independently published year-by-year tally for 2021 and 2022 in the sources provided, but MSF-assisted case totals between April 2021 and March 2024 amount to about 1,500 reported survivors [5], a figure that frames the scale of documented cases across that multi-year period.
1. MSF’s clear 2023 figure — 676 survivors treated, and an alarming December spike
MSF’s teams in Panama reported treating 676 survivors of sexual violence in 2023, and emphasized that December alone accounted for roughly one-third of that annual total when MSF treated 214 survivors in that single month—described by MSF as a sevenfold increase over the monthly average earlier in the year [1] [2] [3] [4]. Journalists and relief outlets repeated the 676 and 214 figures when covering the December surge, and MSF used them to demand immediate protective action from Panamanian authorities [1] [2] [6].
2. What MSF reports for 2021 and 2022: partial counts, not full-year published totals
The sources supplied do not include a straightforward MSF-released annual total for 2021 or 2022 comparable to the 2023 figure. MSF began providing regular Darién services in April 2021 and reported treating 105 women who had been sexually assaulted between May and August 2021 as one documented segment of that year [7]. Other material in the record highlights dramatic increases after 2021 but does not publish a single MSF aggregate for all of 2021 or for 2022 in the provided reporting, so a definitive year-by-year count for those calendar years cannot be stated from these sources alone [7].
3. The multi-year aggregation MSF/others cite: 1,500 survivors April 2021–March 2024
Human Rights Watch, citing MSF activity, reports that MSF assisted 1,500 people who reported sexual violence while crossing the Darién between April 2021 and March 2024—an aggregate that covers the partial 2021 start date, all of 2022 and 2023, and early 2024 [5]. This 1,500 figure provides a useful cross-check that is consistent with the 676 cases documented in 2023 and MSF’s repeated reports of sustained, undercounted violence, but it is an aggregate across multiple years rather than a clean annual breakdown [5] [1].
4. Why year-to-year totals are hard to pin down: what the figures represent
MSF’s numbers represent survivors who sought and received medical and mental-health care from MSF teams after emerging from the Darién; they are not direct counts of every assault that occurred in the jungle, and MSF and independent observers warn many cases go unreported or unsought [2] [1]. MSF itself stressed that December’s 214 treated survivors reflected a sevenfold spike relative to earlier months and called attention to weekly surges—113 treated in one week in February 2024, for example—illustrating how monthly and weekly counts can vary sharply even within a year [8] [6] [9].
5. Caveats, competing interpretations and what the numbers do—and do not—prove
The data supplied are programmatic—counts of patients treated—so they understate total incidents and are shaped by access, survivors’ willingness and ability to seek care, and MSF’s operational presence [2] [5]. MSF and other NGOs argue these numbers reveal a worsening, systemic pattern of sexual violence that surged in 2023; governments and other actors cited by the same coverage have been urged to respond but have varied in their level of action [6] [4]. Where the reporting is silent—precise annual MSF totals for 2021 and 2022—this analysis does not invent figures; it relies on the 105-case partial 2021 account and the aggregate 1,500 figure covering April 2021–March 2024 to contextualize the documented 2023 total [7] [5] [1].