The United Nations General Assembly Tuesday decided by 157 votes to none to appoint the Czech Republic onto the UN Human Rights Council to fill the seat vacated by Russia's suspension on April 7 for alleged war crimes committed during the invasion of Ukraine.
By Sebastián Astorga (*) – A border town divided between two countries, where before the Covid-19 pandemic people passed through without custom controls, is now divided by fences on the two bridges that cross from Ecuador to Peru in its vicinity, cutting off almost completely the only commercial activity on which it survived and further burdening the situation of the more than ten thousand migrants who are passing through, many of them on foot.
A US$1.35 billion appeal has been launched to meet the increasing humanitarian needs of Venezuelan refugees and migrants in Latin America and the Caribbean and to support the communities hosting them. The ongoing political and economic crisis in Venezuela has forced more than 4.6 million citizens to flee, nearly 80% of whom are sheltering in the region.
The larges exodus in Latin America’s history just got larger, the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) said. UN agencies sounded the alarm on Friday over the humanitarian needs after the number of refugees and migrants from Venezuela reached 3.4 million people.
Around two million more Venezuelans are expected to flee their country during 2019, according to a United Nations forecast released Friday in Geneva. If true, the total number of Venezuelan migrants could reach 5.3 million a year from now.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, made a visit to the Colombian-Venezuelan border to understand the dimensions of the exodus of Venezuelans that, according to the UN statistics, 1.9 million have left Venezuela since 2015 due the Venezuela's economic and social situation.
United States declared Nicaragua’s civil unrest a threat to the region’s security, saying government repression of protests risked creating an overwhelming displacement of people akin to Venezuela or Syria. More than 300 people have been killed and 2,000 injured in crackdowns by Nicaraguan police and armed groups in protests that began in April over an abortive plan by leftist President Daniel Ortega’s government to reduce welfare benefits.
The Brazilian government may restrict entrance of Venezuelans at the border in the remote northwestern state of Roraima, President Michel Temer said on Wednesday, after a flood of migrants has strained local services and sparked violence with residents.
The exodus of migrants from Venezuela is building towards a crisis moment comparable to events involving refugees in the Mediterranean, the United Nations migration agency said.
The Ministry of the Interior of Peru has announced that as of the dawn of next Saturday, August 25, Venezuelans will be required to present their passport to be admitted to the country. This measure coincides with that taken by Ecuador this week when it reached record figures in the entry of Venezuelan citizens in that country. The National Superintendency of Migrations of Peru recorded last Saturday the largest number of Venezuelan citizens who entered the country in a single day: more than 5,100.