MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 30th July, 2021) The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly slowed down the process of the socio-economic integration of the Venezuelan migrants and refugees in the neighboring South American states, the United Nation's International Organization for Migration (IOM) said on Thursday.
"Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru, host more than 70 percent of the 5.6 million Venezuelans who have left Venezuela since 2015. Venezuelans in the five case-study countries experience unemployment at higher rates than the receiving-country population, with many losing jobs during the pandemic," IOM said in a report published with the Migration Policy Institute.
The number of Venezuelan migrants and refugees who experienced discrimination in all the countries except Brazil surged between 2017 and 2021, with the most cases in Colombia and Peru.
Venezuela has been experiencing a political and humanitarian crisis since 2019 after Juan Guaido, then head of the opposition-controlled National Assembly, proclaimed himself to be an interim president of Venezuela in a bid to oust re-elected Nicolas Maduro from power.
With over 5 million Venezuelans now living abroad, the vast majority in countries within Latin America and the Caribbean, this has become one of the largest displacement crises in the world, with a special impact on Colombia.
