The UN refugee agency needs $60 million to plug a funding hole for relief efforts inside Venezuela, which in total should cost $109 million, the agency's spokesman, William Spindler, told Sputnik
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 13th February, 2019) The UN refugee agency needs $60 million to plug a funding hole for relief efforts inside Venezuela, which in total should cost $109 million, the agency's spokesman, William Spindler, told Sputnik."Inside Venezuela, the scale-up strategy ... requires a total of USD 109 million to be fully implemented. So far, only USD 49 million has been received, which means that the whole strategy has a financial gap of 55%. In other words, USD 60 million still need to be found," he said.
The strategy was endorsed last November to curtail "further degradation" of the Venezuelan population, Spindler explained.
The agency launched a broader $738 million emergency plan in December, in coordination with the International Organization for Migration, to assist Venezuelans who have fled their country and communities that are hosting them.
Venezuela has been in a dire economic crisis since the global oil market crashed in 2014. The refugee agency estimates that an average of 5,000 people fled the country every day in 2018.
