On a two-day visit to Colombia, UNHCR Special Envoy Angelina Jolie went to Colombia’s border area with Venezuela to assess the humanitarian response to the exodus of Venezuelan refugees and migrants.
The number of Venezuelans leaving their country has reached four million, making Venezuelans one of the single largest population groups displaced from their country.
In Colombia, some 1.3 million have sought refuge. The department of La Guajira in Colombia hosts the third largest number of people originally from Venezuela, after Bogota and Norte de Santander. Over half of them live in the street or in informal sites.
During her visit, UNHCR Special Envoy Angelina Jolie went to an informal settlement known as “Brisa Del Norte”, where Colombians and Venezuelans have found shelter. She also met with Venezuelans at the Riohacha Refugee and Migrant Center and ended her day at Casa del Abuelo, a centre for older homeless people that is also taking in Venezuelans who fled their country.
At Casa Del Abuelo, Jolie met Venezuelan teenager Esther Barboza, who fled her hometown Maracaibo in November of 2018. Ester is visually impaired because of a childhood accident and has been recently diagnosed with a brain tumor. She could no longer access medication in Venezuela and now needs an urgent operation.
This was her 65th mission overall with UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, since 2001. She was joined by the agency’s Deputy High Commissioner, Kelly Clements, who had just spent three days with Venezuelan refugees in Ecuador~UNHCR
