PerspectiveGet Ready for the Venezuela Refugee Crisis
With its economy in free fall, after having already contracted by half this decade, and with its future politics completely up in the air as President Nicolas Maduro clings semi-constitutionally to power, Venezuela teeters on the brink. “Even if things do not get that bad, it is easy to imagine scenarios in which ten million Venezuelans become refugees — with many millions inside the country struggling just to stay alive as food supplies dwindle and public health conditions deteriorate even further,” Juan Carlos Pinzón Bueno and Michael O’Hanlon write.
With its economy in free fall, after having already contracted by half this decade, and with its future politics completely up in the air as President Nicolas Maduro clings semi-constitutionally to power, Venezuela teeters on the brink. Already one of the world’s most crime-afflicted countries, it risks becoming something closer to a failed state in future months. Think of Somalia or Libya, but several times larger in population and several times closer to the United States.
Juan Carlos Pinzón Bueno and Michael O’Hanlon write in the National Interest that for Colombia, Brazil, Guyana, and Caribbean island nations like Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela and its thirty-one million people are right next door. Refugee crises in North Africa and the Middle East have been getting more of the news coverage, but already the human flows out of Venezuela have reached comparable magnitudes — and, with the U.S. oil embargo kicking in, the scale of the problem may soon get much worse. The United States and Colombia should therefore take the lead in planning for what could become, in a plausible worst case, the collapse of Venezuela. Even if things do not get that bad, it is easy to imagine scenarios in which ten million Venezuelans become refugees — with many millions inside the country struggling just to stay alive as food supplies dwindle and public health conditions deteriorate even further.
