Central American governments are losing the ability to protect their own people from the effects of violence, “in particular women and children.”

That’s according to the UN Refugee Agency’s spokesperson in Washington, Brian Hansford, who said there was an urgent need for a regional solution in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

The UNHCR welcomed the US plan announced this week to expand its resettlement programme, to help vulnerable refugees from those countries fleeing mainly gang violence.

The US is trying to ease a crisis on its southern border which began in 2014, caused by refugees seeking asylum.

Gisel Ducatenzeiler spoke with Hansford and started by asking him to describe the situation in the so-called northern triangle of Central America.

Duration: 4’52”