Venezuelan refugees are miserable. Let’s help them out

On a recent August morning at a church-run food pantry in Cúcuta, Colombia, a Venezuelan refugee named Carolina described her predicament in an exhausted, shell-shocked tone.

Back in Venezuela, “I used to have a good job as an archivist, and my husband owned land,” she told us. “We never dreamed things could end up like this.” She sat in worn clothes, looking into the distance as she held a plain bun and small cup of coffee with milk.

Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, has brought his country to its knees. This summer, the political and social crisis there has reached new heights. With no solution in sight, Venezuelans are fleeing en masse into neighboring countries. Every day some 2,500 Venezuelans line up in front of the Casa de Paso Divina Providencia in Cúcuta, just across the Venezuelan border, where we spoke with Carolina, to receive a simple breakfast and lunch. For many, these are their only regular meals.

As human rights activists responding to Venezuela’s crisis and the needs of those who are fleeing it we travel regularly to the Colombia-Venezuela border. With over a million Venezuelans believed to have poured into Colombia, the country has become a focal point for this humanitarian crisis.

The Venezuelans who are crossing over are in increasingly dire straits, selling off all that they have to escape unbearable conditions. Their country’s hyperinflation has reduced their savings to pocket change, and what little they can gather simply isn’t enough to live. Parents who once provided for their children are resorting to last-gasp measures: We have seen women at the border selling their hair for cash.

Many of these border-crossers have urgent health problems because they are unable to find medicine and vaccinations at home. A survey found 16,800 cases of chronic health conditions among Venezuelans in Colombia, and revealed that over one-third of Venezuelan families said that they had gone without food at some point in the last three months.

The breakdown of Venezuelan institutions has meant that passports are available only to those who can pay as much as $1,000 on the black market to a “fixer” with official connections. Because Colombia tightened border restrictions in February, many Venezuelans entering the country now are undocumented.

The Colombian government is reluctant to provide temporary housing for Venezuelans who lack resources to travel further. There is just one government-run shelter on the border, and while it has capacity for 240 people, it sits mostly empty. As we document in a recent report, this shelter is open only to a tiny minority of Venezuelans who have passports and can show proof that they plan to travel on.

Catholic missions have stepped in but can meet only the most urgent shelter needs. As a result, Venezuelans on the Colombian border sleep on the streets, or pay for floor space in cramped dwellings rented out by enterprising locals. Tensions are high, and, more and more, Venezuelans fall prey to discriminatory attacks.

Complicating matters is that Colombian law does not grant citizenship to children born to nonlegal resident foreigners. Many of those fleeing are unable to document their Venezuelan citizenship, leaving their children born in Colombia at risk of being stateless. Without a nationality, every other fundamental human right for these children lies in jeopardy.

Once in Colombia, many Venezuelans continue on to Ecuador, Peru and the Southern Cone countries. Others also flee eastward across the Brazilian border, or north to the Caribbean. But Colombia remains the primary receiving country of Venezuelan migrants and refugees, and has served as a kind of weather vane of the regional response. In recent days, both Ecuador and Peru followed in Colombia’s footsteps by closing their borders to Venezuelans who lack passports. The authorities in the Brazilian border state of Roraima have petitioned their national government to do the same.

As the exodus grows, it also threatens to undermine Colombia’s peace process. Colombia has promised to improve badly needed services to marginalized communities as part of an accord with FARC rebels, and the arrival of Venezuelan refugees has complicated the situation. It is in the interest of the United States and international community, as well as the Colombian government, to find a solution to the needs of Venezuelan migrants and refugees that complements the peace process instead of derailing it.

Before leaving office on Aug. 7, Colombia’s president, Juan Manuel Santos, announced plans to grant temporary residency status to 400,000 Venezuelans who enrolled in a nationwide registry, giving them access to health insurance, education and jobs. The measure is an important step, but fails to address the needs of all Venezuelans in the country, much less the estimated 5,000 who have crossed into Colombia each day since the plan was announced.

Under the new administration of President Ivan Duque, Colombia has an opportunity to turn the tide by showing compassion to Venezuelans escaping hardship. With more help from the United States and the rest of the international community, the Colombian government could lead a regional protection and assistance effort for fleeing Venezuelans. After years of dealing with the human rights and displacement problems stemming from its own internal conflict, Colombia has a wealth of experiences on which to draw from in this effort.

The Duque administration has called for the creation of a special United Nations envoy to respond to the needs of Venezuelan migrants and refugees. This is an important step, but Colombia doesn’t need to wait for the United Nations to lead by example. Affording legal status to the Venezuelans who did not benefit from the registration process would reduce the grave risk of statelessness. Colombia could also resume the issuance of special border cards that allow Venezuelans to enter temporarily to purchase essential goods and medicine.

Demonstrating leadership in this crisis will not be easy for Colombia, and will require greater funding from the United States, European Union and others in the international community. Colombia must also be prepared to invite civil society and humanitarian organizations to expand operations on the border. In doing so, Colombian authorities and international donors will have to ensure that vital resources earmarked for the peace process are not diverted to these efforts.

Support for Venezuelans suffering from a humanitarian emergency is about more than denouncing the conditions they flee. It must entail a commitment to defending and restoring their rights within the country and in the places they flee to. By embracing migrants and refugees, Colombia and the rest of the hemisphere must show Venezuelans that our commitment to them does not end when they leave their homeland.

(Geoff Ramsey is the assistant director for Venezuela at the Washington Office on Latin America)