Venezuela denounces EU-UN conference on refugee crisis

The government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro says a recent conference by the United Nations and the European Union on the Latin American refugee crisis is a "hypocritical" exercise aimed at isolating Caracas.

A two-day conference, co-hosted with the European Commission, was held on the Venezuelan refugee and migrant crisis in Brussels on Monday and Tuesday.

The event was attended by representatives from the UN, the EU, Latin American nations and aid organizations, but Venezuela was not invited to the conference.

Reacting to the event, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza took to Twitter on Tuesday, describing it as "cynicism.”

The event “brought together governments blocking the Venezuelan economy, creating suffering and migration, stealing resources and threatening to isolate and attack Venezuela," he said

"A sad scramble for resources under the hypocritical pretext of a 'preoccupation' for migration," he added.

Venezuela has been struggling under severe economic contraction, hyperinflation, power cuts, and shortages of basic items as a result of US economic sanctions, a situation that has prompted millions of people to flee to neighboring countries.

The special representative for the UN’s refugee and migration agencies, Eduardo Stein, described the refugee crisis as “unprecedented,” saying it was generating “increasing levels of xenophobia” in the region.

“The challenges for 2020 will be even greater than those faced in 2019,” he told the conference. 

"For the coming year we project the total number of Venezuelan refugees and migrants to pass from 4.5 million to 6.5 million," Stein added.

Currently, Colombia is hosting 1.4 million Venezuelan refugees. Peru has taken 860,000, Chile 371,000, Ecuador 330,000 and Brazil 212,000 refugees from the oil-rich country.

Colombia's Foreign Minister Carlos Holmes Trujillo said the number of Venezuelans in his country "meant big demand for services, for health treatment, assistance and education services, services for children.”

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The UN human rights chief, Michelle Bachelet, has criticized Washington’s latest sanctions, saying the restrictive measures are “likely to significantly exacerbate the crisis for millions of ordinary Venezuelans.”

Venezuelans are suffering from a lack of basic necessities under the US sanctions. According to UN statistics, a quarter of Venezuela’s 30-million-strong population is in need of humanitarian aid. At least 3.3 million people have left the country since the end of 2015, the data shows.

In an effort to force Venezuela’s elected president out of office, Washington has further tightened its unilateral sanctions, the latest of which saw Washington freeze all Venezuelan government assets in the US and ban commercial transactions.

In the meantime, the US pledged 98 million in funding to the country’s opposition figure Juan Guaido, who pushed Venezuela into political turmoil last year by rejecting the outcome of the May 2018 presidential election, which President Maduro won.

He went as far as declaring himself the “interim president” and Washington, along with its European and regional allies, recognized him as the legitimate leader.

Carrie Filipetti, a US State Department official focused on Latin America, said in Brussels that Washington's strategy of sanctions and supporting Guaido was yielding "a lot of successes.”

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"We're very optimistic about where this is heading," she said, adding a “growing international coalition" was recognizing Guaido as Venezuela's interim president and "considering more pressure options to force Maduro to come to the table to negotiate in good faith.”

Guaido even orchestrated a failed coup against Maduro, with backing from Washington, but the effort fell flat as the military and the vast majority of Venezuelans stood by the president. 

The EU, which has been under growing pressure from Washington to take action against Maduro, has also threatened the country with more measures if his government did not move toward a timetable for presidential elections.

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