Eduardo Stein, the special representative of UNHCR and IOM for Venezuelan refugees, projects that there will be 6.4 million migrants from this country by the end of next year

“Latin America will never be the same,” proclaims Guatemalan former vice-president Eduardo Stein. As the special representative for Venezuela of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), he is responsible for coordinating efforts to address the unprecedented migration emergency in the region. More than 4.5 million Venezuelans have fled the devastating crisis in their country, of which 1.5 million have found refuge in neighboring Colombia, by far the main destination, followed by Peru (860,000), Chile (371,000) and Ecuador (330,000). “No country can face this exodus alone,” says Stein (Guatemala City, 1945) in a talk with EL PAÍS during his recent visit to Bogotá to launch a regional plan to address the growing humanitarian needs of Venezuelan refugees and migrants in Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as the communities that host them.

Question. You are the special envoy to address one of the largest flows of people in the world. What is the severity of this immigration emergency?

Answer. Latin America is experiencing the greatest forced migration flow in its history, neither in the periods of the wars of independence, nor in tragedies of natural disasters, have we faced a phenomenon of this size. Governments began to react in the first place with enormous generosity, welcoming the Venezuelan population that left and continues to leave, but now they are reaching saturation levels where their national budgets and institutional capacities are exhausted. We are facing a phenomenon of profound transformations throughout the region. Latin America will never be the same after what we are experiencing.

Q. And the flow continues

A. As long as there is no stable internal political solution in Venezuela, people who feel in situations of extreme deprivation will continue to leave at a rate of between 4,000 and 5,000 each day. We have to prepare ourselves as a region for a phenomenon of forced migration that presses the public structures of health care, education and, above all, the capacity to offer jobs. And that directly affects domestic communities in each of the countries. Regional consultation is indispensable. By staying alone we weaken. Integration becomes a very big need.

Q. How much money does a migratory emergency of this type require?

A. At UNHCR and IOM we made an effort at the end of 2018, in consultation with governments, to prepare a regional plan to respond to the needs of refugees and forced migrants. 732 million dollars was raised in 2019, of which 52% has been collected to date. Yet the flow of people is unstoppable, and more and more people leave in conditions of extreme precariousness, compared for example with 2015, when most were high-level professionals who could be inserted very quickly in neighboring countries. Argentina, for example, gave work almost immediately to a thousand petroleum engineers who left Petróleos de Venezuela Sociedad Anónima (Oils of Venezuela Inc., PDVSA). Instead, it is now a population with extreme needs and very large vulnerabilities. By 2020, the humanitarian and development response plan contemplates 1,350 million dollars, and we have managed to get the attention of the Member States of the European Union more broadly and deeply, becoming very important contributors.

Q. These are figures overwhelm the response capacity of any South American country. Colombia, by far the main destination, has repeatedly called for greater international cooperation. It is being achieved?

A. The times of political negotiation at the different tables that have been created to find a way out of Venezuela’s internal crisis are not equivalent to humanitarian times. Humanitarian needs cannot wait. And that is why not only the Colombian authorities but of all the countries that have converged in the so-called Quito Process are insisting on the urgency of this humanitarian aid to at least face the first demands of the crisis. Some countries have imposed a type of visa that has led to a decrease in the flow of legal entries but increase irregular crossings, which places this population in a greater vulnerability because they have to resort to cross-border criminal gangs to achieve their objective. There is a level of urgency due to the sudden nature of this crisis. But there are also structural needs for investment in the host communities. This is essential. The key is to generate employment for everyone, not just Venezuelan men and women.

Q. Colombia seems increasingly alone in its position of reception and immigration flexibility.

A. I want to highlight the intrinsic value of the Quito Process as a space to share successful experiences, especially in the area of ​​regularization and documentation. To the extent that a migrant or a person seeking refuge is regularized, the risks of abuse and violation of their fundamental human rights decrease. The governments seek to achieve that regularization through concerted mechanisms.

Q. What do you think about the behavior of host societies? Do you fear Latin Americans losing patience and outbreaks of xenophobia emerging?

A. Those outbreaks have occurred, they are currently happening. But fortunately, so far there have been few. It is curious how the Latin American effort of concertation, solidarity and openness is admired from outside. The region has organized itself to innovate in the most fundamental issues of attention, not only to the specific Venezuelan crisis but to our integral development needs in general. The Quito Process is yielding results of regional understanding even in educational issues, surpassing the schemes that already existed for the validation of professional titles.

Q. Beyond the possibility of a change in Venezuela that alters migration trends, it is a phenomenon of immense magnitudes. What are the scenarios are you anticipating for next year?

A. Judging by crises in other regions of the world, an important part of the migrant population no longer returns to their country but settles in the country of destination. Those who return do it after at least two or three years, if not more. In consequence, we have to be prepared to continue addressing the elements of the humanitarian emergency for at least the next two years. That is why we have made this plan for the year 2020 in the hope that the absorption or socio-labor insertion of those who have already left can keep the pace of the governments’ plans for the next few months.

Q. Will the displaced in Venezuela outnumber those in Syria next year?

A. If the flows continue as they are, we could reach about 6.4 million people by the end of 2020. It means it would exceed the figures of the Syrian phenomenon with two important differences. People are leaving a country that is not at war and a country that has the largest proven oil reserves in the world.

Q. What lessons have you learned from a year in office?

A. It was possible to garner international support for the moments of a humanitarian emergency, which are the crossing and subsequent weeks. The need to invest in host communities in integral terms also strongly arose. If employment is not generated for all, these host populations immediately become upset with what they understand to be greater attention to the “outsiders”, so to speak, than to the locals. Colombia has been a very remarkable experiment because it identified very quickly legal or regulatory problems that needed to be modified to expedite the provision of basic services to the population that continues to arrive.

Source: El País