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Venezuela

Latin America Needs To Get Serious About The Venezuelan Exodus

The flood of people fleeing Venezuela's dire economic and political situation is more than any one country can handle. But so far, there's been little effort to organize a coordinated reaction.

Migrants crossing the border between Venezuela and Colombia
Migrants crossing the border between Venezuela and Colombia
Arlene B. Tickner

-Analysis-

BOGOTÁFrom Colombia to Ecuador and Chile, to diminutive Caribbean islands with little space to spare, Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) states have had to take on unimaginable numbers of Venezuelans since 2015.

Indeed, the region is witnessing one of the biggest, if not the biggest, migratory movement in its history. And, despite the best intentions of certain mechanisms adopted to attend to these migrants and provide for basic needs like lodging, healthcare, education and work, the size of the flux — 2.3 million, according to UN estimates — is beyond the capacities of any country.

The Venezuelan exodus is not only testing the tradition of solidarity and hospitality that has marked the LAC when contending with past cases of forced displacements, violence, and even economic migration, but also their specific commitments within the 1984 Cartagena Declaration on Refugees, which is more generous than the 1951 UN Convention in how it confers refugee status.

colombia_venezuela_migrants

Venezuelan refugees on the streets of Colombia — Photo: Provea

Instead of open arms, we're seeing a rise in deportations and border militarization. Some countries are doing away with special residence permits and imposing impossible documentation requirements. And, in many places, there's been an uptick in xenophobic reactions in general.

While the crisis is shouting out for a multilateral response and international help, these have been lukewarm so far. The Organization of American States (OAS) is an obvious space for dealing with this, but the humanitarian crisis is so enmeshed with Venezuela's internal political context that it has been impossible to forge a consensus within the regional body.

Indeed, the region is witnessing one of the biggest, if not the biggest, migratory movement in its history.

Of all the OAS members, Colombia — given its proximity to Venezuela and the outsized portion of the refugees it is receiving — should be leading a collective response to the crisis. And yet, its new ambassador to the OAS, the very conservative former inspector-general Alejandro Ordoñez, is hardly the ideal person to take such an initiative. Keep in mind, too, that Colombia withdrew from the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR in Spanish), another possible forum for debating the problem.

The international community outside the region, including the United States and European Union, is also paying little attention to the issue, especially compared to other migratory crises such as the those of Syria and the Mediterranean. Not that the response given to those crises, marked mainly by a closure of borders to migrants (with exceptions, such as Germany), is worthy of emulation.

UN bodies such as the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) are working with LAC countries to devise comprehensive tools to attend to this mass migration. So far, however, the allocated budgets are lacking.

In the meantime, there are reasons to think that, rather than stabilizing or diminishing, the Venezuelan exodus will only grow. If that's the case, the humanitarian crisis will expand along with it, threatening regional states, in turn, with socio-economic and political destabilization.

These are all things the LAC countries and the international community need to urgently take into account. And yet, given the absence of functioning regional institutions or leadership, it seems likely instead that we'll see just more inertia, indifference, and ad-hoc measures.

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FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War

A New Survey Of Ukrainian Refugees: Here's What Will Bring Them Back Home

With the right support, Ukrainians are ready to return, even to new parts of the country where they've never lived.

photo of people looking at a destroyed building with a wall containing a Banksy work

People look at a Banksy work on a wall of a building destroyed by the Russian army, in the town of Borodyanka, northwest of Kyiv.

Sergei Chuzavkov / SOPA Images via ZUMA Press Wire
Daria Mykhailishyna

After Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, millions of Ukrainians fled their homes and went abroad. Many remain outside Ukraine. The Center for Economic Strategy and the Info Sapiens research agency surveyed these Ukrainian war refugees to learn more about who they are and how they feel about going home.

According to the survey, half of Ukrainians who went abroad are children. Among adults, most (83%) are women, and most (42%) are aged 35-49.

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Most Ukrainian refugees have lost their income due to the war: 12% do not have enough money to buy food, and 28% have enough only for food.

The overwhelming majority of adult refugees (70%) have higher education. This figure is much higher than the share of people with higher education in Ukraine (29%) and the EU (33%).

The majority of Ukrainian refugees reside in Poland (38%), Germany (20%), the Czech Republic (12%), and Italy (6%). In these countries, they can obtain temporary protection, giving them the right to stay, work, and access healthcare and education systems.

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