FACT SHEETBUREAU OF POPULATION, REFUGEES, AND MIGRATIONFEBRUARY 4, 2020
Since 2017, the United States has
provided over $656 million in aid to the Venezuela crisis, of which nearly $473
million is humanitarian assistance for the close to 4.8 million Venezuelans who
have been forced to flee their country and those facing acute humanitarian
needs inside Venezuela. The Department of State’s Bureau of
Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM) provided more than $208 million of
that total to provide Venezuelans with food and shelter, register for services,
and integrate them into host countries.
Our funding supports the work of
international and non-governmental organizations to complement host government
efforts to protect and assist Venezuelans inside Venezuela and in 16 host
countries, including Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and several Caribbean
island nations.
We provide this assistance to promote
regional stability and help Venezuelans meet their needs close to home so when
changes come to Venezuela, Venezuelans can return safely and voluntarily.
What can over $208 million in humanitarian
assistance accomplish? Here are just a few examples of how our support
helps hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan refugees and migrants:
1) Urgent shelter, food, and supplies
In 2019, we worked with our partners to
provide shelter, food, and other life-saving items to Venezuelan refugees and
migrants. With our support, the International Organization for Migration (IOM)
provided temporary shelter to more than 53,000 Venezuelans in the region
between April 2018 and September 2019. By August 2019, PRM partner, the
Pan American Development Foundation (PADF), had provided operational,
logistical, and technical support to seven migrant shelters in Colombia
benefitting 9,584 Venezuelans. Our contributions to the UN High Commissioner
for Refugees (UNHCR) provided cash assistance, infant kits and hygiene kits,
drinking water, and transportation. At Peru’s northern border with Ecuador,
UNHCR and IOM assisted up to 100 Venezuelans daily with their urgent
humanitarian needs.
2) Legal status and asylum
Registering Venezuelan refugees and migrants
is an essential first step to ensure access to basic services in their host
communities. Our support to international partners helped facilitate this
process. From September 2018 to August 2019, PRM partner, PADF, provided
guidance on basic legal rights to 10,825 Venezuelans in Colombia. In December 2019, Brazil announced it would recognize
Venezuelan asylum seekers as refugees, accelerating asylum processing for most
of the approximately 119,000 Venezuelan asylum seekers in Brazil. By the
end of the year, Brazil granted refugee status to more than 21,000 Venezuelans
with the support of PRM-funded UNHCR. IOM provides technical assistance to
the Government of Ecuador that includes improvements in hardware and software
in 15 Migratory Support Centers across the country using biometric data. In
September 2019 alone, these centers assisted 63,062 Venezuelans in Ecuador.
3) Integration
Our support helped partner
organizations launch national and regional social inclusion outreach campaigns
on radio, television, and social media to prevent and respond to discrimination
against Venezuelans and other vulnerable migrants and asylum seekers. With U.S.
funding, IOM and UNHCR promoted social integration between Venezuelans and
Peruvians through the #TuCausaEsMiCausa campaign (“Your Cause is My Cause,” a
play on words with the Peruvian national dish “causa” as well as Peruvian slang
for “friend”). Through the UN Regional Platform for the Venezuela Response led
by UNHCR and IOM, the campaigns and activities reached more than 75 million
people. PRM partners in Brazil helped relocate tens of thousands of
refugees and migrants from the northern border with Venezuela to cities across
the country with greater access to public services and opportunities for
integration.
4) Employment
With a focus on longer-term solutions for
vulnerable Venezuelans, PRM funded technical training, job placement, and
self-employment programs. In September 2019, IOM supported 2,657 Venezuelans
with income generation activities in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Peru, the
Dominican Republic, Guyana, and Mexico. In Chile, 1,494 Venezuelans
participated in a labor fair for the socio-economic integration of refugees and
migrants. Forty-seven local and international companies offered jobs ranging
from engineers and accountants to security guards, business assistants, and
technicians.
In La Guajira, Colombia, PRM partner PADF
began operating a co-op in which Venezuelan refugees gather plastics for
recycling in a company operated by a Colombian returnee through its “Integrando
Horizontes” (“Integrating Horizons”) project. Through the project,
approximately 70 tons of recyclable trash was collected and removed from the
streets of Riohacha, La Guajira per month, and participants were able to earn
as much as 35,000 to 40,000 Colombian pesos per day (approximately $10-12/day)
to meet their basic needs, well over the minimum monthly wage in Venezuela.
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