BOGOTÁ, Colombia — The donor funds pledged to the Venezuela response do not match the scope of host needs — and neither does awareness of the scale of the crisis, according to Ulrich Zachau, World Bank director for Colombia and Venezuela.
There was great awareness across Europe of the impact and size of recent migration flows from the Middle East and Africa to that continent, which saw his home country of Germany take in around 1 million people over the course of five years, he explained in an interview with Devex.
The same awareness does not exist for the number of people flowing from their homes to other countries in South America, often by walking land routes. An estimated 9 percent of the Venezuelan population — 2.7 million people — is now living outside the country. Colombia has taken in the most Venezuelans, already numbering more than 1 million, and is expected to receive another 1 million in 2019. It is followed by Peru with 506,000, Chile with 288,000, and Ecuador with 221,000.