The UN urged Venezuela’s neighbors on Thursday to keep their borders open as thousands of migrants continue to pour out of the country to escape hyperinflation and economic collapse. Speaking after Ecuador and Peru said they were tightening entry requirements for Venezuelan migrants, Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, said that any such measures must continue to “allow those in need of international protection to access safety and seek asylum”.
Mr Grandi praised Latin American states for hosting around 1.6m Venezuelans who have left their homeland since 2015. The Venezuelan exodus is rapidly becoming one of the world’s biggest refugee crises, comparable with the plight of the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar and the departure of Syrians from their war-torn country. Caracas is trying to arrest one of the world’s worst bouts of hyperinflation and this week lopped five zeros off the bolívar, devaluing it by 95 percent.
The UN says 2.3m people have left Venezuela in recent years — 7 percent of the population. Many have fled to neighboring Colombia and found their way from there into other Andean nations: Ecuador, Peru, and Chile.