Page 19 - Preliminary Report on the Venezuelan Migrant and Refugee Crisis in the Region

It is important to note that the number of Venezuelan migrants and refugees recorded by the

United Nations in its most recent report only counted those in Latin America and the

Caribbean; therefore, the figures are lower than the total number of Venezuelans at
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destinations worldwide.

A comparison between the number of Venezuelan migrants and refugees with those from other

current and past refugee crises around the world requires a number of clarifications. First, it is
true that not everyone in the different crises that appear in Figure 2 has official refugee status

in their receiving countries. However, those numbers correspond to the category referred to by

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the United Nations as refugee-like. Second, the chart only counts individuals with refugee-like
status that fled to a foreign country and, therefore, excludes internally displaced people. In the

case of Venezuela there is no evidence of internal displacement, in contrast to other crises
reflected in the chart (and others not shown, such as that of Colombia, with large numbers of

internally displaced people). Third, the comparison intentionally uses absolute figures and not

relative terms in order to avoid an arbitrary selection, so as to standardize the numbers,
thereby preventing their manipulation. In light of those arguments, we consider the

visualization relevant and informative.

Figure 2 describes how the refugee crisis in Syria that began

…the speed at which the
in 2011 reportedly resulted in 6.3 million people displaced
total number of
Venezuelan migrants and outside their country of origin by 2017. Likewise, the war in
refugees has grown is as Afghanistan, which began in 1978, would eventually produce

high as that seen in the
some 6.3 million migrants and refugees 11 years later, who
first years of the Syrian
crisis. reached other countries. In the case of Venezuela, since
2015—in just three years—the number of migrants and

refugees has passed 3.4 million, taking into account only destination countries in Latin America

and the Caribbean, according to United Nations estimates. It is important to note that the

38 United Nations. Plan de emergencia ante la salida de venezolanos, December 14, 2018,
https://news.un.org/es/story/2018/12/1448001.
39 The United Nations Refugee Agency. “Global Trends, Forced Displacement in 2017.” 2018,
https://www.unhcr.org/statistics/unhcrstats/5b27be547/unhcr-global-trends-2017.html.

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