Venezuelans fleeing political and economic crisis at home deserve protection as refugees, the United Nations said yesterday, urging other states not to deport them.
Some 3.7mn people have left Venezuela, including 3mn since 2015 as the economy has imploded causing widespread shortages and hunger, and anti-government street protests have brought waves of violence and deaths.
Venezuelans continue to leave at the rate of 3,000 to 5,000 a day, the UN refugee agency UNHCR said, giving updated guidance on how to handle the exodus.
“UNHCR...now considers that the majority of those fleeing the country are in need of international refugee protection,” agency spokeswoman Liz Throssell told a news briefing.
“It is incredibly important given the situation in Venezuela that there aren’t deportations, expulsions or forced returns.”
The agency added that it was issuing a “guidance note” to countries to advise them that most displaced Venezuelans are entitled to international protection. “This is because of the threats to their lives, security or freedom resulting from circumstances that are seriously disturbing public order in Venezuela,” UNHCR said in a statement.
UNHCR noted that there had been some deportations from Caribbean islands, including by Trinidad and Tobago last year.
Only 460,000 Venezuelans had sought formal asylum as of the end of 2018, mainly in Peru, the US, Brazil and Spain, while others have legal stay arrangements in countries including Colombia, Chile and Ecuador, it said.
The UN children’s agency said that deteriorating conditions inside Venezuela had left vulnerable children with limited access to health, education, protection and nutrition services.
The agency has provided nearly 190,000 children with access to nutrition programmes but cannot do all it wants to in Venezuela, Unicef spokesman Christophe Boulierac said.
Dozens of nations around the world now recognise opposition leader Juan Guaido as interim president, saying President Nicolas Maduro rigged a 2018 election and is behaving like a dictator.
But Guaido has been unable to remove Maduro, who still has the backing of the top military brass.
The economy in oil-rich Venezuela was already spiralling downward before Maduro was sworn in for a second six-year term in January.
Meanwhile the Venezuelan opposition’s envoy to the US said he met Pentagon and state department officials in Washington on Monday to discuss “all aspects of the Venezuelan crisis.”
Carlos Vecchio, opposition leader Juan Guaido’s ambassador to Washington, said in a message on Twitter that the talks held at the state department had been “very positive” but offered no further details. “We continue to advance,” he said.
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