Pic 1: Nicolas Maduro
Venezuela
humanitarian crisis started after Nicolas Maduro came to power in 2014.
The
country is rich in oil. It has the largest proven oil reserves in the world making
their gas’s prices the cheapest amongst other countries. However, it is
arguably that this exact that holds many of its economic problems.
The
richness sources of oil makes Venezuela to seem never bothered to produce other
commodities. They import the goods Venezuelans want and need from abroad using
the earnings from exporting oils. 95% of Venezuela’s earning comes from the oil
exportation.
Hence,
when the oil prices drop rapidly in 2014, it faced with a shortfall of foreign
currency where the humanitarian crisis began at Venezuela. Sinking foreign
currency made it difficult to import goods at the same level as before, and
imported items became scarcer.
As a
result, businesses increased goods prices especially in the black market and
inflation rose. Five years straight of brutal recession, leads to dangerous
shortages of essential goods and the hyperinflation of Venezuelan bolivar
reaching 1 million per cent. Only 26 days taken to double the goods price.
To
solve the problem, the government print more money which actually drives down
its value. Currently, 1 USD equal to 248,000 Venezuelan Bolivars(VEF). However,
the goods prices keep rising even though the government regularly increase the
minimum wage, and implementing price controls on certain products. Poverty
keeps on rising.
The
downfall of foreign currency is not the only problem Venezuela’s facing, U.S.
putting the country under pressure by imposing sanctions. But, Maduro still
ruling.
On
February 2018, Venezuela officially launched the pre-sale of its new digital
currency called the petro. According to the government, the petro is backed by
oil, gas, gold and diamonds, and is meant to help overcome U.S. and EU
sanctions.
As a
respond to that, President Donald Trump signed an executive order barring any
U.S. based financial transactions involving Venezuela's new crypto-currency as
U.S. officials warned that it was a ‘scam’.
Meanwhile,
Socialist President Nicolas Maduro blamed the United States and other countries
for starting an “economic war” against the country. He has accused the United
States of plotting to invade Venezuela and overthrow his government, while
Washington has placed sanctions on Venezuela's debt and members of Maduro's
government over accusations of corruption, human rights violations and
election-rigging.
Imagine
in 2017 alone, 64% of Venezuelans lost weight, losing 25 pounds on average due
to food shortages and an inability to pay for food. About a quarter of the
population does not eat three times a day, and 82% lived in poverty as of 2017. People are dying from
shortages of food and medicine.
Pic 2: Illustration
The
conditions in hospitals and clinics are extremely bad. Those who are undergoing
chemotherapy, requires an emergency surgery, or even have a sinus infection are
at risk of not receiving proper health care due to the crisis.
According
to Reuters, infant mortality increased to 30% in 2016, and cases of malaria
surged by 76%. The government has even resorted to rationing electricity and
water, giving varied excuses but did not taking any responsibility for the
issue. This has caused outages throughout the country, some lasting between an
hour or as long as 13 days.
These
power outages further complicate medical care for those who need it most,
disrupting the already weak medical assistance they receive and making it
worse. Imagine not being able to shower for multiple days in a row, relying on
candlelight to see in your home, or not having access to the Internet. This has
become a common occurrence for Venezuelans.
Almost
3 million children are missing some or all of their classes due to the crisis.
Some of these children are dying of starvation and suffering from severe cases
of malnutrition, which inherently affects their ability to learn in school.
Many
public schools have closed due to a lack of government funds. In the week
leading up to the presidential election in May last year, the Venezuelan
government closed schools to prepare them to serve as voting centre. It is
expected that a generation of Venezuelan children will be impacted by high
levels of illiteracy.
The
conditions have deteriorated across universities as well, with restrooms being
out of order, computer rooms having no computers, and research budgets being
slashed. Students are simply not finishing their education, many opting to
leave the country for a better life instead of gaining their degrees. Hence,
professors are also leaving in a mass exodus for better wages in other parts of
the world, creating a shortage of educators.
2.3
million Venezuelan refugees already left the country since 2014, almost 8 per
cent from overall population, 32.4 million people.
Pic 3: Colombian police officers stand in front of
people lining up to try to cross into Colombia from Venezuela through Simon
Bolivar International Bridge
Trump
spoke forcefully at the United Nations General Assembly in September 2018,
calling the humanitarian crisis in Venezuela as “human tragedy”.
According
to a Brookings Institution study, 8.2 million Venezuelan including the 3
million that have already left will flee the country over the next two to three
years. Luis Almagro, secretary general of the 34-nation Organization of
American States predicts that the Venezuelan exodus may be even larger than
estimated in the Brookings report.
“I
think that the 8.2 million figures may end up being too low, considering the
magnitude of Venezuela’s crisis, there may be up to 10 million Venezuelans who
will have to abandon that country over the next four years,” he said.
That
would be a much larger migration disaster than the Syrian refugee crisis that
have shaken the European Union, and that contributed to the rise of right-wing
anti-immigrate governments and political parties across Europe. It certainly
would be an unprecedented mass exodus in Latin America in recent times.
Venezuela
President Nicolas Maduro may not get away with it easily. There is no way that
Colombia, Brazil and other countries in the neighbourhood will agree to absorb
8 million to 10 million Venezuelan refugees, barring a massive package of
international aid that unsurely will come anytime soon. Many of Colombia’s
schools and hospitals are already overcrowded.
This
Venezuela’s humanitarian crisis will directly or indirectly hurt every country
in the region. It will be, by far, Latin America’s most urgent problem.
Countries such as Mexico and Spain, which have suggested that they will not
join international diplomatic efforts to restore democracy in Venezuela, will
not be able to remain on the side lines.
Noting
that 2 million Venezuelans have escaped ‘the anguish inflicted by the socialist
Maduro’s regime’ Trump asked world leaders to join forces and seek the
restoration of democracy in Venezuela.
However,
despite Trump’s statements of empathy for Venezuelan refugees, they were not
exempts from his administration’s immigration crackdown. Trump closing borders
from getting refugees through Colombia. Nearly 260 Venezuelans were deported
from the U.S. in the first half of 2018 alone, up from 248 deportations in all
2017 and 182 in 2016.
Even
though Vice President Pence’s recognized that ‘violence and tyranny’ rule the
country, Venezuelans are routinely denied political asylum. Over the past five
years, immigration judges have rejected nearly 50 per cent of all Venezuelan
asylum applications.
Venezuelans
now represent the biggest group of asylum seekers in the U.S., surpassing
Central Americans in 2016. Last year Venezuelan refugees filed 27,629 asylum claims,
more than 10 times the 2,181 petitions made in 2014.
Immigration
attorneys in Miami say the U.S. consulate there has also been revoking tourist
visas from Venezuelans, and the federal government has drastically reduced the
number of non-immigrant visas issued to Venezuelans, from 239,772 in 2015 to
47,942 last year.
According
to scholars, Trump’s Venezuela policy shows that his administration is doing
much less that it could to ease Venezuelans’ suffering.
The
U.S. will allocate an additional 48 million USD in humanitarian aid to fund
U.S. agencies that are providing disaster and food relief to Venezuelan
migrants in Latin America. Added to the 46.8 million already earmarked as
humanitarian aid for Venezuelan refugees, total 94.8 million U.S. foreign aid for
the South American nation. It is 14 million higher compared to 2017. But even
with the big boost, foreign assistance for Venezuela is just a fraction of the
475 million given last year to Colombia and only slightly higher than the Latin
America regional average of 62 million in annual aid.
Eleven
nations in the region including refugee-saturated Brazil and Colombia, recently
agreed to accept more Venezuelans without excluding those with expired
documents. Many Venezuelans cannot get a passport or renew their national
identity cards because of the Maduro regime’s slow, dysfunctional and corrupt
bureaucracy.
The
White House’s failure to act on Venezuela has not stopped Trump from using its
crisis for electoral gain in November’s midterm elections. He wrote in an
Oct.10 USA Today op-ed saying the new Democrats are radical socialists who want
to model America’s economy after Venezuela. He insisted that these Democrats
want to shut down American energy and replace freedom with socialism.
