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More than 6.8 million Venezuelans have left their country in recent years fleeing socialism, according to the latest update, released Monday, of the Interagency Coordination Platform for Refugees and Migrants from Venezuela (R4V).
The R4V is a regional coordination mechanism co-led by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to respond to the displacement of refugees and migrants from Venezuela in Latin America and the Caribbean.
According to a message from the coalition posted on Twitter, “the number of refugees and migrants from Venezuela continues to rise. As of August 2022, 6,805,209 people left Venezuela. 84% (5,745,664) live in Latin America and the Caribbean.”
The data, with a cut-off date of August 5, represents an increase of 9.7% (660,000 people) compared to the last report offered in July, which reported 6.15 million migrants.
“These figures represent the sum of Venezuelan refugees, migrants, and asylum seekers reported by host governments. They do not necessarily imply individual identification or registration of each individual, and include a degree of estimation, depending on each government,” says the platform.
The measurement period available starts in February 2018, when information on 1.2 million migrants was available, and ends in August 2022 with the last available report.
R4V clarifies that since “many of the government sources do not take into account Venezuelans without a regular migratory status, it is likely that the total number is higher.”
Colombia, with 2.5 million Venezuelans, leads the reception of this population, followed by Peru with 1.3 million, Ecuador and Chile with about half a million people each, and Brazil with almost 360,000.
The platform also indicates that as of 2019 there were close to half a million Venezuelans in the United States and that as of January of this year the total number of migrants from the Caribbean country who had settled in Spain reached 438,000.
