This series draws on the webinar “Seen, Counted and Protected” convened by Family for Every Child as part of the Children on the Move 2026 campaign. Six civil society organisations working across Guatemala, Mexico, Nepal, Greece, the UK, and Colombia came together to share what identity rights look like in practice for children on the move. Each post in this series focuses on one organisation and one dimension of the problem.
There is a version of this work that looks simple from the outside. A young person arrives without papers. You help them get papers. They can then access the services they need. JUCONI’s experience in Mexico tells a more complicated story, one about what it actually takes to reach young people who have learned, through direct experience, that adults and institutions are dangerous.
JUCONI works in Puebla with unaccompanied adolescents and young people who have fled organised crime, gang recruitment, and systemic violence, mainly from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. These are not children who left home for economic reasons. They left because staying put would have killed them.
They arrive in Mexico without adults who know them, without any support network, and very often without documents. Mexico has legal mechanisms to protect people in this situation. But as JUCONI has observed over years of practice, there is a large gap between what the law says and what actually happens across different government agencies. Protection frameworks that are not fully implemented across institutions do not protect people in practice.
Trust cannot be assumed
When young people first arrive at JUCONI’s transition houses, they are not ready to engage with documentation processes. During the first months, many resist integration with other residents, remain in frequent conflict, and give incorrect information about their names, ages, and countries of origin.
This is not obstruction. It is a survival response. These young people have learned that sharing accurate information about themselves can get them hurt, reported, or deported. Institutions that claim to help can also betray them and telling an organisation your real name feels like a risk. Giving an address feels like leaving a trail.
Before any documentation process can begin, JUCONI has to build a relationship that young people can actually trust, which takes time and consistency. It means being present beyond the point of a specific need and over months. It means accepting that the relationship will be tested before it is believed.
The actual cost of the documentation gap
Without a recognised identity document in Mexico, a young person cannot open a bank account, nor can they register for a SIM card in their own name or access most formal employment. It’s also impossible to enrol in further education, and they can’t build financial independence, either.
This matters beyond the practical inconvenience. Young people who cannot access formal economic life do not simply find themselves at a standstill, they become more vulnerable to exploitation and to recruitment by the same criminal networks they fled. The absence of documentation is a major risk factor.
Building a path
JUCONI’s model reflects this understanding. They know that documentation is one element of a much longer process. The organisation accompanies young people through skills development matched to their own interests and aspirations, financial literacy, connection to education and local institutions including universities that can begin to know these young people before they are formally enrolled, and psychosocial support that can hold the impact of what they have survived.
For young people who have subsisted by asking for money on the street, financial literacy is foundational. For people who have only known systems that worked against them, learning to navigate a system that might actually help requires a different orientation, one that is built slowly through experience.
JUCONI has also worked to change the model of residential care in Mexico more broadly. Residential systems in the country have tended toward overprotection: young people in care are so insulated from everyday decisions that when the time comes to live independently, they lack basic competencies. JUCONI’s work has contributed to shifting how residential care for adolescents approaching independence is understood and practised.
The long term view
Angel Rojas, who works at JUCONI made a point that is hardest to forget: it all come back to creating a sense of belonging. These young people did not choose to be in Mexico. It’s that their choices were taken from them. When they arrive in a new country, in a new city, without papers, connections and the ability to prove who they are, the question of identity goes far beyond which office to visit.
Documentation matters. For these young people, being seen and being safe are, first, about whether a human being decides to stay long enough to want to get to know them.
This is part 4 of a six-part series.
Family for Every Child’s Children on the Move 2026 campaign runs from 15 to 21 June. Join the conversation on the Changemakers platform.
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