Venezuela and Trinidad Show The Strain of Modern Refugee Crises

[dropcap]H[/dropcap]istorically, many humanitarian crises, though tragic, have been foreseeable. The displacement of citizens after major wars is a common example. Historians today continue to study the impact of conflicts like World War II, Vietnam and the more recent incursions in the Middle East, that have served as a trigger for crisis migration. The recent experience of Venezuelans warrants a different consideration. While events this year have confirmed that this chapter is now the biggest migration crisis in Latin American history, the pace and scale of its emergence has also been relentless, with over 2.3 million people — around 7% per cent of the country’s population — departing in just a few years.

The proximity of Trinidad and Tobago to Venezuela has ensured that this twin island nation would be among those Venezuelans look to first. And the latest development in this relationship provides a window into the very heart of the Venezuelan issue, and signifies a new chapter in the global emigration debate.

The Speed of Venezuela’s Decline

In 2015 the United Nations credited Venezuela as the nation that had achieved the greatest progress in the fight against the eradication of hunger throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. Yet in November 2018 Venezuela received US$9 million in emergency aid to help alleviate medicine and food shortages. As with any economic meltdown, there are always numerous factors in play behind such a rapid turn of fortunes, and this is true in the oil-abundant nation. Undoubtedly at the forefront of these were the Venezuelan government’s populist policies. For a time the socialist ethos by the government spurred the economy but it ultimately came crashing down decisively. The government was officially declared in default in November 2017, further driving the situation from bad to worse.

Venezuelans look to Trinidad

With an economy faltering and social unrest growing, many Venezuelans understandably looked to depart and seek safety in neighbouring nations. These nations have come under great pressure to provide humanitarian relief to Venezuelan migrants, and tensions have risen both within domestic political circles and between the ruling Maduro regime in Venezuela and other regional governments. At its shortest measurement, the distance between Venezuela and Trinidad’s shores is a mere 11 kilometres, with part of Venezuela’s expansive coastline encircling Trinidad’s, like a crescent moon, on the Gulf of Paria. Looking beyond this issue’s politics to simple logistics, it’s difficult to overstate the challenge for Trinidad’s border security officials, especially when this crisis is compounded by former Venezuelan fisherman-turned-pirates, who operate in waters that Jonathan Franklin of Bloomberg called “the most lawless market on Earth today”.

Longstanding international convention surrounding refugees has been tested anew in the era of globalisation. Challenges to community stability — whether they’re economic, like a market meltdown, or a security threat, like a terrorist attack — can arise rapidly without warning, and play out over multiple locations. There is no suggestion that the emergence of these issues offers easy absolution to those who would advocate for nations to totally close their borders; just instead a recognition that this is a difficult matter, now made more difficult by the interconnectivity of our world.

Trinidad In The Refugee Debate

Border security has been a hot political issue globally. The tensions between the Trump White House and Mexico City have evidenced this especially. The border security debate between Mexico and the US has long raged. So too the ‘debates in the debates’, such as how critics of the White House point to rising illegal border crossings via the Canadian side into the US, that is by and large ignored, as a vivid example of the distance between good politics and good policy in Washington on this issue.

The rapidity and scale of Venezuela’s crisis is of a different consideration but the same challenges arise surrounding the Venezuela migration issue, like any other. Presently Trinidad, though a signatory to the United Nations 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol, has long resisted calls to adopt that into domestic law. Given that by the middle of 2018 over 3,300 Venezuelans had applied for asylum in the nation of 1.3 million, it’s not hard to understand that the desire of Trinidadians to help could be strained by the island’s capacity to properly offer it.

While there is unfortunately always a small segment of any nation that champions ‘Fear of the Other’, in Trinidad there are simple questions of resources and structures. Any reasonable person could identify the very real and unique hurdles there. Nations with 100 million or more may not blink an eye at processing 3,300 asylum seeker claims, and can do so with speed and precision given their years of accepting people from other countries. Yet the experience of Trinidad is further complicated by the fact that, historically, Venezuela shares its place as a leading source of emigrants to Trinidad alongside Syria, Bangladesh, Jamaica, Nigeria and Colombia, each with expats making strong claims for residency. Even if not as urgent as Venezuela’s, each forms a part of Trinidad’s future, and its own right to ultimately chart a course for how it wishes to engage with the world beyond its borders.

A New Landscape

The story of Venezuela and Trinidad is one that the people of Latin America and beyond must observe. The lesson is: If business can become truly global, so can humanitarian crises. It may not appear, at first, that the path of Venezuelans to Trinidad is truly a global concern but it demonstrates the tension that can arise when international conventions of refugee support require certain action, yet small nations are usually not adequately resourced for a regional crisis.

The recent volatility experienced in the currencies of Argentina and Turkey, and the news that South Africa is now in recession, are not crises on the scale of Venezuela but they are further sign that all nations now have truly global citizens. So now a new conversation is required about what it means to be a responsible one.