Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. I'm very happy to be back before this committee as it's an important ally for the UNHCR, the UN refugee agency.
I'm also particularly pleased that the committee has decided to shed light on the situation in Latin America, because it has been traditionally one of the situations in terms of refugees, forceable movement of people and migration, that has been often under-reported in the media, in the public and sometimes in some of your sister Parliaments abroad.
I'll discuss three different situations this afternoon to introduce the topic.
The first one is the north of Central America. That concerns people leaving and fleeing El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. I was there a year ago, and for somebody such as me who has spent most of his career in the field in wartorn countries in the Middle East and in Africa, I came to realize that the level of violence and the type of violence is very similar to what you would see in a conflict.
It is inflicted by criminal gangs, organized crime, which are actually de facto controlling part of the territory, or part of the territories in those three countries, where the presence of state law enforcement and judicial authorities are not possible, where the presence of public services such as health or education is extremely limited for a certain number of the population.
As we speak, we believe that by the end of 2019 we'll have more than 300,000 asylum seekers and refugees from those three countries in the sub-region, on top of which we have to add 60,000 people who are going to be forceably returned, mainly from Mexico and the U.S., who may have protection concerns when they arrive back in one of those three countries, and more than 3,000 internally displaced people in those three countries. It's quite an important crisis for UNHCR and its partners.
From the survey we have done with people who are on the move, who are trying to move for their safety towards Mexico or the United States, 71% have expressed being directly targeted by violence, in particular, women, children, young girls, by those criminal gangs. I interviewed young girls who at the age of 17 had been several times gang-raped by the gangs, young men who are forceably conscripted into those criminal gangs, but also the LGBTQ community and in particular transwomen, who are particularly at risk of being targeted.
On top of that, we can add also human rights defenders, lawyers, indigenous leaders and a number of unaccompanied children who are joining those caravans, who made the headlines a few months ago when they reached Mexico.
People from those three countries are going to a number of countries, such as Belize, Costa Rica, Guatemala and Panama, but mainly are arriving in Mexico. As we all know, it's difficult for them to cross into the U.S. to claim asylum.
Anyway, we think in Mexico there's a good prospect for us to stabilize those populations, provided that the asylum system in Mexico can grant them refugee status, provided that we can offer them access to livelihood opportunities so that they can get bread and butter and can have access to education, and that we support the host communities, in particular, the poor Mexican communities that are hosting them. We have the COMAR in Mexico, which is doing the same work as the IRB is doing here in Canada.
One point where Canada can play an active role is in the resettlement of the most vulnerable of those community members. Again, I'm speaking about women at risk. I'm speaking about survivors of sexual and gender-based violence. I'm speaking about the LGBTQ community, with an emphasis on transwomen.
We have mechanisms to identify those most at risk in the three countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, for them to avoid being persecuted or at risk of traffickers where they would be exploited, including for sexual purposes, to extract them from their country and resettle them to a third country. The U.S. provided more than 800 spaces for those people last year.
Let me briefly turn to Nicaragua. You know the situation well. Since April 2018 there has been some political violence in Nicaragua linked to social security reform, higher taxes and fewer benefits. What is important to note here is that 32,000 Nicaraguans have already left to go to Costa Rica to seek asylum, and the Costa Rican authorities believe there are between 250,000 and one million Nicaraguans who were already in Costa Rica prior to the April event and who are therefore what we call réfugiés sur place because they potentially cannot return now to Nicaragua. This has put a strain on Costa Rica in terms of their asylum system but also in terms of services and livelihood opportunities for those Nicaraguans.
The last point is on Venezuela, which has been in the media over the last two or three months. Here are a few numbers to explain the current situation. There are more than 3.4 million Venezuelans outside their country, both as refugees and as migrants. Another important point to note is that since 2015, 2.5 million have left the country. The bulk of the Venezuelans outside their country left after 2015. We expect that at this rate, by the end of 2019, 5.3 million Venezuelans will be outside their country, 3.6 million of whom will be in the sub-region. Here we are speaking about Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and Brazil, in that order in terms of numbers of people.
Notably, we have witnessed 5,000 people leaving Venezuela every day. There has been no increase over the last few days or weeks in the number of people leaving the country, but you know that there has been an increase in militarization and in police being deployed at the border, and UNHCR is reminding the authorities on both sides of the border that people should be entitled to leave their country if they are fleeing for their lives and want to claim asylum.
We have done some surveying, particularly in Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, about the reasons people are leaving Venezuela. You know the situation well. It's a mix of economic factors, but also of violence. Sixty-seven per cent of them have reported a protection incident. Thus, two-thirds of the people we interviewed were certainly to be considered as refugees and not as migrants, because they were fleeing a situation of persecution or human rights violations. Only half of them had reported the incident to the authorities, claiming that they feared either reprisals or no action from the authorities, if they were to complain about those protection incidents.
Let me flag rapidly a few profiles of the people we see arriving in Colombia, Peru and Ecuador in particular. Ten per cent have medical needs. Here in particular we have lactating mothers or pregnant women who didn't have access to services in Venezuela. Sixteen per cent of them are elderly people who have difficulty surviving and getting access to medication in particular. Seven per cent are children with medical needs. Two per cent are persons with disabilities. Three per cent are unaccompanied or separated children, children moving on their own without a legal guardian or their parents.
We are trying with the United Nations to beef up our response in Venezuela on nutrition, health and protection. UNHCR has had a long presence in Venezuela, because there are more than 850,000 persons in Venezuela who are of concern to UNHCR, mainly Colombian refugees and asylum-seekers. A number of those Colombians have been forced to return to Colombia, maybe sometimes against their free will, to be resettled in their own country.
Unfortunately, as we speak now, the funding that has been requested by the United Nations, which also includes the NGOs, has a funding gap of 55%.
I will stop here. I welcome questions, remarks or suggestions from the committee.
