Page 20 - Preliminary Report on the Venezuelan Migrant and Refugee Crisis in the Region

speed at which the total number of Venezuelan migrants and refugees has grown is as high as

that seen in the first years of the Syrian crisis.

In that sense, the graph also shows consistently in all the cases analyzed that the number of
refugees continues growing for several years after the crisis or conflict begins before peaking. It

is hard to know for sure when the Venezuelan migrant and refugee crisis will peak but there are

several estimates that are important to consider.

The United Nations recently announced a forecast of 5.4 million by the end of 2019 in Latin

America and the Caribbean, which is more than 60% percent higher than the 2018 number of
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3.4 million.

That forecast is based on a linear projection that assumes that the flow of migrants in 2019 will

be the same as in 2018. Figure 3 shows two possible projections as far as 2020, premised on the

assumption that there will be no significant changes in Venezuela that bring an improvement in
the situation. Extending the linear projection to 2020 takes the estimated total number of

Venezuelan migrants and refugees to around 7.5 million. Figure 3 also offers a visual

representation of a projection made by the Brookings Institution (BI), which, were it to become
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a reality in 2020, would take the total to 8.2 million people.

40 United Nations, Regional Refugee and Migrant Response Plan for Refugees and Migrants from Venezuela,
December 14, 2018,
https://s3.amazonaws.com/unhcrsharedmedia/2018/RMRP_Venezuela_2019_OnlineVersion.pdf.
41 Bahar, Dany and Douglas Barrios, How many more migrants and refugees can we expect out of Venezuela?
The Brookings Institution, December 10, 2018, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-
front/2018/12/10/how-many-more-migrants-and-refugees-can-we-expect-out-of-venezuela/.

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