One million people have left Venezuela since November as the exodus from the crisis-hit South American country has continued to skyrocket, UN agencies said on Friday.

The latest increase has brought the total number of Venezuelan migrants and refugees abroad to 4 million, up from 695,000 in late 2015, when the opposition’s election victory set the stage for intensifying conflict with President Nicolas Maduro.

According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), Colombia is the main destination, hosting 1.3 million Venezuelans, followed by Peru with 768,000.

Chile, Ecuador, Brazil and Argentina host hundreds of thousands, while Central American and Caribbean states have also taken in significant amounts of people from Venezuela.

“Latin American and Caribbean countries are doing their part to respond to this unprecedented crisis,’’ Eduardo Stein, the UN refugee and migration manager for Venezuela, said.

“But they cannot be expected to continue doing it without international help,’’ Stein said.

A crisis plan to help 2.2 million exiled Venezuelans as well as their host communities was launched late 2018.

So far, only 21 per cent of the needed 738 million dollars have been funded by donor countries.

Venezuela has experienced a massive economic and political crisis under Maduro, who won a second term in an election boycotted by most of the opposition a year ago.

The dire situation has pushed Venezuelans to leave the country amid hyperinflation and goods shortages. </s> UN: Venezuelans now file 1 in 5 of all new asylum claims

LIMA, Peru (AP) — When Johan Álvarez was unable to provide more than one meal a day for his young family he knew it was time to leave Venezuela.

With his wife and infant son, the 25-year-old embarked on a lengthy journey by bus through three nations to reach Peru earlier this year.

Now they are among a growing swell of Venezuelans asking to be recognized as refugees.

A United Nations report released Wednesday finds that Venezuelans represent the largest group worldwide filing new asylum claims. Those fleeing the troubled South American nation made more than one in five of all asylum requests in 2018, higher than the number of claims made by people escaping Afghanistan and Syria.

But Venezuela is not in the midst of war and many foreign governments are reluctant to recognize the migrants as refugees.

On a recent overcast day in Peru's capital, Álvarez filed into a line with about a hundred other Venezuelan arrivals filing for asylum, hoping his family's tale of hunger back home would be enough to earn them refugee status.

"It's not a war of arms," he said. "But it is a war of survival."

As Venezuela's crisis drags on, the number fleeing is rising by alarming numbers. The United Nations estimates there are now 4 million Venezuelans living abroad — a quarter of whom have fled since November. The Organization of American States estimates the number could reach 7.5 million by the end of 2020.

The widely used definition of refugee is someone who has fled his or her homeland because of persecution, war or violence. Asylum claimants typically have to show that they cannot return due to a well-founded fear of persecution because of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular group.

But a more encompassing definition in the 1984 Cartagena Declaration includes people fleeing hunger and poverty resulting from the breakdown of rule of law — conditions which a much wider group of Venezuelans are experiencing.

To date, more than 460,000 Venezuelans have sought asylum, including nearly 350,000 in 2018 alone, according to the U.N. A large number of those claims are being filed in Peru, where some 800,000 Venezuelans now reside.

Last year, Peru received 192,500 claims — an astoundingly high number that has created a backlog. Just over 1,000 Venezuelans have gotten their asylum requests approved. Worldwide, only about 21,000 Venezuelans have been recognized as refugees to date.

The U.N. report released Wednesday notes the Venezuela migration crisis has increasingly taken on the "characteristics of a refugee situation" and says it is clear that international protection considerations "are applicable to the majority of Venezuelans." Such protections could spare them from deportation.

"People fleeing Venezuela are doing so in increasingly complex circumstances," said Federico Agusti, the U.N. refugee agency's representative in Peru. "It's not just a humanitarian crisis. The reason they had to leave is because their life was in danger."

David Smolansky, a Venezuela opposition leader who himself escaped in a journey through the jungle of Brazil, is now the coordinator of a migrant working group led by the Washington-based Organization of American States. He has been traveling throughout the Americas encouraging nations to apply the Cartagena Declaration, which was signed by several of the Latin American nations where Venezuelans are now arriving.

"If you give them refugee status, it will guarantee protection," he said. "I think it will create a commitment from the international community to cooperate more."

Accepting a broader definition of who constitutes a refugee is particularly relevant in Colombia, where large numbers of Venezuelans have fled.

Despite taking in an estimated 1.3 million Venezuelans, neighboring Colombia has received just 2,729 asylum claims, according to U.N. data. Many migrants are discouraged from applying because the process can take as long as two or three years. Others have been told only strict cases of political persecution or desertion will be acknowledged.

Gabriel Valles is one of those hoping his seemingly shoo-in case in Venezuela's neighboring country will be accepted.

The 32-year-old systems engineer and opposition activist spent more than two years in a Venezuelan high-security detention center run by the government's feared intelligence agency that is located five levels underground and known as "The Tomb."

There were no windows and the lights were almost always kept on, he recalled.

The only way he could tell if it might be day or night was by the hum of a metro line that ran nearby. If trains were passing by more frequently, he reasoned, it must be daytime.

"I always asked myself if the people who took the Caracas metro had any idea that below them exists a place where people are jailed," he said.

He was transferred to another jail before being released after nearly four years behind bars, and he later applied for asylum in Colombia.

Valles currently has permission to work and live in the country for 90 days. Even though it can be repeatedly renewed, he said companies have been reluctant to hire him, not having any guarantee that he will have legal status for more than three months.

Many of his compatriots are in even more dire straits: Over a third of Venezuelans in Colombia have no legal status, which often forces them to take low-paying and even abusive jobs on the black market.

"Venezuelans in Colombia should be treated as refugees," he said. "For many reasons other than whether or not there is an armed conflict."

Several nations, including Colombia, continue to forcibly remove migrants despite the dangers they might face back home, while other countries are confronting a myriad of additional issues.

The United States has received some 81,800 asylum requests from Venezuelans and President Donald Trump recently said his administration is considering granting legal temporary protective status to thousands of Venezuelans who have fled.

But Niels Frenzen, a law professor and director of the University of South California's immigration clinic, said the TPS push faces an uphill battle because of the political conundrum it creates for Trump and his tough-on-immigration stance.

"You have these opposing political desires, at least in the current U.S. government," he said.

In Peru, the number of asylum applications is soaring partly because it has become easier to make requests. At the border, Venezuelans can submit their documents for refugee status, which is one of the only ways they can enter after the implementation of new requirements that made it impossible to cross without a passport.

For Álvarez, applying for such status was his best option.

He said his wages working at a liquor store in Venezuela only provided his family with enough money to eat once a day in the afternoon. When his newborn son became anemic and malnourished, they decided to flee.

"I felt like my stomach was consuming itself," he said.

A relative living abroad sent him $450 for the lengthy journey to Lima, where he now works at a candle factory. Though he earns just $329 a month, he said his family eats three times a day.

Returning to Venezuela, he said, would be the equivalent of returning to a nation at war.

"The war is with those who sell food, with the hospitals, with the government," he said. "I want refugee status because I'm looking for a future for my son." </s> Ah, the joys of socialism. Amidst a growing political and economic crisis, 4 million citizens have now fled Venezuela. According to a new report by the UN Refugee Agency and the International Organization for Migration, the pace at which citizens are leaving the country has been "staggering", rising from 695,000 people in 2015 to over 1 million people since November 2018.

The countries surrounding Venezuela have been forced to put regulatory measures in place to stop the flow of migrants, which will soon be the largest in Latin American history, according to Bloomberg. Should the exodus continue, it could surpass the 6.3 million refugees created by the Syrian civil war.

Over 12 countries met last year to address the flow of migrants that is putting pressure on resources and stoking tensions in the region. A universal policy for dealing with the problem has yet to be enacted and, on Thursday, Peru said it would increase controls later this month by requiring Venezuelans to apply for humanitarian visas before crossing the border.

Colombia remains the primary destination for those leaving Venezuela, and it now hosts 1.3 million people who have fled the country. Peru hosts 768,000; Chile 288,000; Ecuador 263,000; Brazil 168,000 and Argentina 130,000. Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean have also seen an influx of Venezuelan migrants.

Eduardo Stein, the joint UNHCR-IOM Special Representative for Venezuelan refugees and migrants said: “These alarming figures highlight the urgent need to support host communities in the receiving countries. The countries are doing their part to respond to this unprecedented crisis but they cannot be expected to continue doing it without international help.”

Just days ago we reported that Venezuela had defaulted on $750 million in gold-backed swaps with Deutsche Bank. As part of a financing agreement signed in 2016 which we profiled here, Venezuela received a cash loan from Deutsche Bank and put up 20 tons of gold as collateral. The agreement, which was set to expire in 2021, was settled early due to missed interest payments as Venezuela has now effectively run out of foreign reserves.

Additionally, we reported recently how difficult it was to get even $1 worth of Venezuelan Bolivars anywhere in the country: the reason - hyperinflation in the country is alive and well according to the Bloomberg Venezuela Cafe con Leche index. Finally, back in April, we documented the "Zombie Apocalypse" that gas gipped the country in photos of Caracas in darkness. A series of AP photographs entitled As the sun sets, Venezuela’s capital empties presented Caracas as essentially becoming a ghost town after sunset, depicting its infrastructure collapse and lack of services like electricity, water, and public transport. </s> Image copyright Reuters Image caption Latin American countries host the vast majority of Venezuelan migrants and refugees

More than four million Venezuelans have fled their country amid an economic and humanitarian crisis, UN agencies say.

The pace of people fleeing has "skyrocketed" since the end of 2015, with around one million leaving in the last seven months alone, they found.

The agencies said countries hosting the migrants and refugees were in "urgent need" of international support.

Venezuela's imploding economy has meant shortages of basic supplies, such as food and medicines, in recent years.

The crisis has deepened this year amid a bitter power struggle between the government and opposition.

The exodus means Venezuelans are now "one of the single largest population groups displaced from their country", the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) and International Organization for Migration (IOM) said in a joint statement on Friday.

The agencies said they calculated the four million figure using data from national immigration authorities and other sources.

They did not give an exact date for when the calculation began, but said some 3.3 million people had fled since the end of 2015.

A UNHCR spokesperson told the BBC that the real figure may be even higher due to the use of unofficial border crossings.

The agencies called for support to be given to countries hosting the Venezuelans.

"Latin American and Caribbean countries are doing their part to respond to this unprecedented crisis but they cannot be expected to continue doing it without international help," said Eduardo Stein, joint UNHCR-IOM special representative for Venezuelan refugees and migrants.

Latin American countries host the vast majority of Venezuelan migrants and refugees. According to UN figures, Colombia hosts the most at 1.3 million, followed by Peru with 768,000.

Countries in Central America and the Caribbean also host significant numbers of Venezuelans.

What's the situation on the ground in Venezuela?

Under the government of Nicolás Maduro, the economy has collapsed and shortages of food and medicines have become widespread.

In parts of the oil-rich country, fuel has become scarce and drivers queue for days at petrol stations. There are also frequent blackouts.

Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption What are the real reasons behind Venezuela’s blackouts?

The government says the shortages are caused by US sanctions. The opposition argues that they are the result of mismanagement and corruption by consecutive socialist governments.

Who is in charge?

Venezuela is engulfed in a political crisis with two rival politicians - Mr Maduro and National Assembly leader Juan Guaidó - claiming to be the country's legitimate leader.

Mr Guaidó declared himself interim president in January, arguing that Mr Maduro's re-election last year had been "illegitimate".

He has since been recognised by more than 50 countries, including Canada, the US and most in Latin America. But Mr Maduro retains the loyalty of most of the military and important allies such as China and Russia.

Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Venezuela crisis: The four countries interested in the presidential battle

On 30 April, Mr Guaidó led a failed attempt to spark a military rebellion against Mr Maduro, which the latter said was part of a US-orchestrated coup.

Since then, close allies of Mr Guaidó have been arrested. While his parliamentary immunity has been lifted, he has so far not been jailed.

Representatives of the two sides have been holding talks in Norway but they ended without agreement last week. </s> More than half a million Venezuelans have crossed into Ecuador this year as part of one of the largest mass migrations in Latin American history, the United Nations said on Friday.



About 547,000 citizens of the crisis-stricken South American country have entered Ecuador since January – mostly through its northern border with Colombia – to escape rampant crime and political violence, a collapsing economy and severe shortages of food and medicines.

That is nearly 10 times the number of migrants and refugees who attempted to cross the Mediterranean into Europe over the same period. The International Organization for Migration this week announced that 59,271 migrants and refugees tried to reach Europe by sea between January and August, with most coming to Spain, Italy or Greece. 



The UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, said a daily average of up to 3,000 Venezuelan men, women and children had entered Ecuador this year but that the already “massive influx” was now accelerating further. 



About 30,000 Venezuelans – more than 4,000 per day – arrived in the first week of August, leading Ecuador to declare a month-long state of emergency.



Some reports have suggested fears Colombia’s newly installed president, Iván Duque, could close his country’s borders had caused the surge which has seen huge crowds of roofless migrants converge on the Rumichaca Bridge between Colombia and Ecuador. 



UNHCR spokesman William Spindler told reporters: “Many of the Venezuelans are moving on foot in an odyssey of days and even weeks in precarious conditions.”

“Many run out of resources to continue their journey and, left destitute, are forced to live rough in public parks and resort to begging and other negative coping mechanisms in order to meet their daily needs.”

For all of those hardships many exiles say conditions abroad are preferable to those back home where the International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicts inflation will hit one million per cent this year. 



More than a million Venezuelans have crossed into Colombia since the exodus began in 2015. Others have fanned out across Latin American and Caribbean nations including Mexico, the Dominican Republic and Trindad and Tobago. Tens of thousands have hiked into Brazil down a remote Amazon road known as the Hunger Highway.

Spindler said about 20% of those entering Ecuador were expected to remain while most continued south to Peru or Chile. About 40% were women and girls who faced “serious risk of sexual violence, in particular survival sex and trafficking”.

The Venezuelan exodus has become an increasingly high-profile and contentious political issue in neighbouring countries, with some border regions struggling to cope with the influx. 



“Xenophobic reactions to the exodus have been noted in some quarters,” Spindler said. Earlier this week a Brazilian judge briefly blocked Venezuelans from entering northern Brazil. 



On Thursday night the crisis was raised during the first televised debate ahead of Brazil’s October presidential election. “The [Venezuelan] government is collapsing and this is generating a humanitarian crisis of absolutely unacceptable proportions,” said one candidate, the former finance minister Henrique Meirelles. “We must act so that the situation changes in Venezuela and the regime changes ... so Venezuelans want to go back.”



Álvaro Dias, another presidential hopeful, said Brazil could not turn away those fleeing hunger, violence, misery and death: “It would be perverse to expel human beings who have been driven out by a bloodthirsty and merciless dictatorship.” </s> LIMA, Peru — The number of Venezuelans fleeing the country is accelerating at a “staggering” rate, the United Nations reported Friday, as the South American nation is caught in a political struggle and grinding humanitarian crisis.

The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, said there are now more than 4 million Venezuelans living abroad — and that 1 million have left in the last seven months alone.

“The pace of the outflow from Venezuela has been staggering,” UNHCR said in a statement. “From some 695,000 at the end of 2015, the number of refugees and migrants from Venezuela had skyrocketed to over 4 million by mid-2019.”

Neighboring Colombia is now home to 1.3 million Venezuelans, followed by Peru with 768,000, Chile with 288,000, Ecuador with 263,000, Brazil with 168,000 and Argentina with 130,000. However, almost every country in the region is hosting “a significant number of Venezuelans,” UNHCR said.

Most countries have taken unprecedented steps to help the migrants, including allowing them to enter on expired passports and providing residency and work programs. But that might be changing.

Peru, which has had some of the most welcoming policies toward Venezuelan migrants, announced Thursday that it will begin requiring them to apply for visas at Peruvian embassies in Venezuela or Colombia.

The new requirement comes as dozens of Venezuelans have been expelled from Peru after committing crimes and as President Martin Vizcarra is facing pushback from those worried about what they see as uncontrolled immigration.

Colombia has also complained that the international community isn’t doing enough to help Venezuela’s neighbors handle the influx, which is taxing the region’s health, education and social security systems.

“These alarming figures highlight the urgent need to support host communities in the receiving countries,” said Eduardo Stein, the special representative for Venezuelan refugees and migrants for UNHCR and the International Organization on Migration. “Latin American and Caribbean countries are doing their part to respond to this unprecedented crisis, but they cannot be expected to continue doing it without international help.”

Venezuela has been trapped in an economic and humanitarian crisis for years amid falling oil production, hyperinflation, and widespread corruption and mismanagement. More recently, economic sanctions from Washington and elsewhere are thought to be exacerbating the crisis.

Leader Nicolas Maduro is fighting for his political survival against Juan Guaido, the head of congress whom the United States and more than 50 other countries consider Venezuela’s legitimate president. </s> Despite populist rhetoric in the West, the real refugee crisis is playing out in developing countries, which hosts most of the record 70.8 million displaced people who have fled war and persecution, the United Nations said on Wednesday (June 19).

Half of the worlds forcibly displaced are children and the 2018 total is the highest in nearly 70 years, doubling that of 20 years ago, the U.N. refugee agency said in its annual flagship report, Global Trends.

But the figure is “conservative”, as it does not include most of the 4 million Venezuelans who have fled abroad since 2015, it said.

This is because Venezuelans do not need visas or to lodge asylum claims to stay in most host countries. If the outflow continues, a total of 5 million Venezuelans could have left by year-end, it added.

Filippo Grandi, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees urged for a political solution in the country.

Venezuelans arriving mainly in Colombia, Peru and Ecuador formed the second biggest flow of newly displaced abroad last year, after Syrians fleeing to Turkey after eight years of war, the agency said.

U.S. President Donald Trump has made reducing illegal migration along the border with Mexico one of his signature policy pledges. </s> An estimated 3.3 million people have fled the crisis in Venezuela since the start of 2016, including one million who have left the country since November, the United Nations said Friday.

"The pace of the outflow from Venezuela has been staggering," the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) and International Organization for Migration (IOM) said in a joint statement.

Economically-devastated Venezuela is suffering from shortages of food, medicine and other essentials amid a power struggle between President Nicolas Maduro and opposition leader Juan Guaido, who has been recognised as interim president by more than 50 countries including the United States.

American actress and UNHCR goodwill ambassador Angelina Jolie will travel this weekend to a Colombian region on the Venezuela border "to assess the humanitarian response to exodus," the agency said.

Colombia is hosting about 1.3 million people displaced from Venezuela, the most of any country, followed by Peru, Chile and Ecuador.

The joint UNHCR-IOM envoy for the crisis, Guatemala's former vice president Eduardo Stein, said there is "an urgent need to support host communities" in the countries receiving displaced Venezuelans. </s> Geneva: Developing countries, not rich Western nations, are bearing the brunt of the world's refugee crisis and are hosting most of the record 70.8 million displaced people who have fled war and persecution, the United Nations said on Wednesday.

The 2018 total is the highest in nearly 70 years and sadly, half of the world's forcibly displaced are children, the UN refugee agency said in its annual flagship report, Global Trends.

But the global figure, which comprises 25.9 million refugees, 41.3 million people uprooted within their homelands, and 3.5 million asylum-seekers, is "conservative", it said.

That is because it does not include most of the 4 million Venezuelans who have fled abroad since 2015 as they do not need visas or to lodge asylum claims to stay in most host countries. If the outflow continues, a total of 5 million Venezuelans could have left by year-end, it said.
The UN predicts that over five million Venezuelans, over 15% of the nation's population, will have left the country by the end of 2019 since the start of the crisis in Venezuela—the total at the end of 2018 was 3.3 million. One million have left the country since November, with a daily average of 5,000 departures. Additionally, over 20% of all worldwide UN asylum requests are from Venezuelans; 350,000 applied in 2018 alone.