Around 70.8 million people were forcibly displaced worldwide as a result of persecution, conflict, violence or human rights violations in 2018, according to a UN refugee agency report. This is the highest number that the UN has reported regarding the refugee crisis to date.

While the global refugee population has exceeded the previous year's estimate by 2.3 million, this year's Global Trends report indicates that the total number of refugees worldwide exceeds the population of Thailand. It also stated that 37,000 people were forced to flee their homes every day in 2018.

Similar to last year's data, children accounted for every second refugee in the world, accounting up to half of the total refugee population in 2018. Around 111,000 children were alone and without their families. Uganda reported that around 2,800 refugee children aged five or below or separated from their families.

The report highlighted the recent political crisis in Venezuela as a major concern, according to the UN body. It cited the estimate of four million Venezuelans who have left their country and attributed it as the world's biggest current displacement crisis.

More than 67 per cent of all refugees worldwide came from five countries: Syrian Arab Republic (6.7 million), Afghanistan (2.7 million), South Sudan (2.3 million), Myanmar (1.1 million) and Somalia (0.9 million)

It revealed over half a million new refugee registrations and asylum applications had originated from the Syrian Arab Republic (Syria) in 2018. People from Venezuela accounted for the second-largest new international displacements in 2018 with 341,800 asylum applications. These were followed by Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and South Sudan as well as the massive flow of Rohingya refugees to Bangladesh at the end of 2017.

As the language around refugees and migrants are often divisive, the UN High Commissioner for Refugee Filippo Grandi said, "generosity and solidarity by communities who are hosting a large number of refugees need to be acknowledged."

The report suggested that one-third of the total global refugee population (6.7 million people) were in the least developed countries while developed countries hosted 16 per cent of refugees.

In India, 195,891 refugees resided in the country with 11,967 pending cases of asylum seekers, last year.

Due to the Rohingya refugee crisis, Bangladesh hosted 906,600 people from Myanmar in 2018. Other countries with sizable populations of refugees from Myanmar were Malaysia (114,200), Thailand (97,600) and India (18,800). </s> More than 70 million people worldwide are fleeing war, persecution and conflict, the highest number ever recorded, according to the UN Refugee Agency.

The latest UNHCR Global Trends report warns that the number of people forcibly displaced has doubled over the past 20 years, with numbers significantly increasing from 43.3 million in 2009 to 70.8 million in 2018.

While most of the increase has been driven by the Syrian war, conflict in other areas such as Iraq, Yemen, the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan combined with the massive flow of Rohingya refugees to Bangladesh has contributed to this rise, notes the report. In Ethiopia, more than 1.5 million people became displaced last year because of ethnic clashes in the south and west of the country, most of them within their own country.

By the end of 2018, an estimated 4 million Venezuelans had fled violence, insecurity, food and medical shortages and fear of persecution in their home country. Colombia and Peru have accepted the highest number of Venezuelans but many have also travelled to Brazil, Ecuador, Chile and the Caribbean islands. An estimated 5,000 people continue to leave the country each day while 5 million are expected to have left by the end of 2019, UNHCR has warned.

Forcibly displaced people are made up of three groups – refugees, asylum seekers and internally displaced people, those displaced within their own country.

The number of refugees worldwide grew by 500,000 in 2018 to 25.9 million people, the highest number ever recorded. A refugee is a person who is forced to flee their country because of conflict, war or persecution. Nearly half the world’s refugees are children while an estimated 111,000 are alone and without their families.

More than two-thirds of the world’s refugees come from just five countries – Syria (6.7 million) followed by Afghanistan (2.7 million), South Sudan (2.3 million), Myanmar (1.1 million) and Somalia (900,000).

The world’s poorest countries hosted one-third of all refugees worldwide in 2018 compared with countries in the developed world where 16 per cent of refugees live, underlines the report. For the fourth consecutive year Turkey hosted the largest number of refugees worldwide with 3.7 million people residing within its borders. It was followed by Pakistan (1.4 million); Uganda (1.2 million); Sudan (1.1 million) and Germany (1.1 million). In Lebanon, where the overall population is just over 6 million, one in six people in the country are refugees.

According to the report, just 593,800 refugees were able to return home in 2018, less than 3 per cent of the refugee population.

Asylum seekers – people who live outside their country of origin and are receiving protection but are awaiting the outcome of their claim to refugee status – made 1.7 million claims for protection in 2018 with the United States the largest recipient of individual applications.

The US was followed by Peru where 192,500 (predominantly Venezuelans) applied for asylum; Germany (161,900); France (114,500); and Turkey (83,800). By the end of 2018 about 3.5 million people were waiting a decision on their asylum application. </s> UN: Venezuelans now file 1 in 5 of all new asylum claims

LIMA, Peru (AP) — When Johan Álvarez was unable to provide more than one meal a day for his young family he knew it was time to leave Venezuela.

With his wife and infant son, the 25-year-old embarked on a lengthy journey by bus through three nations to reach Peru earlier this year.

Now they are among a growing swell of Venezuelans asking to be recognized as refugees.

A United Nations report released Wednesday finds that Venezuelans represent the largest group worldwide filing new asylum claims. Those fleeing the troubled South American nation made more than one in five of all asylum requests in 2018, higher than the number of claims made by people escaping Afghanistan and Syria.

But Venezuela is not in the midst of war and many foreign governments are reluctant to recognize the migrants as refugees.

On a recent overcast day in Peru's capital, Álvarez filed into a line with about a hundred other Venezuelan arrivals filing for asylum, hoping his family's tale of hunger back home would be enough to earn them refugee status.

"It's not a war of arms," he said. "But it is a war of survival."

As Venezuela's crisis drags on, the number fleeing is rising by alarming numbers. The United Nations estimates there are now 4 million Venezuelans living abroad — a quarter of whom have fled since November. The Organization of American States estimates the number could reach 7.5 million by the end of 2020.

The widely used definition of refugee is someone who has fled his or her homeland because of persecution, war or violence. Asylum claimants typically have to show that they cannot return due to a well-founded fear of persecution because of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular group.

But a more encompassing definition in the 1984 Cartagena Declaration includes people fleeing hunger and poverty resulting from the breakdown of rule of law — conditions which a much wider group of Venezuelans are experiencing.

To date, more than 460,000 Venezuelans have sought asylum, including nearly 350,000 in 2018 alone, according to the U.N. A large number of those claims are being filed in Peru, where some 800,000 Venezuelans now reside.

Last year, Peru received 192,500 claims — an astoundingly high number that has created a backlog. Just over 1,000 Venezuelans have gotten their asylum requests approved. Worldwide, only about 21,000 Venezuelans have been recognized as refugees to date.

The U.N. report released Wednesday notes the Venezuela migration crisis has increasingly taken on the "characteristics of a refugee situation" and says it is clear that international protection considerations "are applicable to the majority of Venezuelans." Such protections could spare them from deportation.

"People fleeing Venezuela are doing so in increasingly complex circumstances," said Federico Agusti, the U.N. refugee agency's representative in Peru. "It's not just a humanitarian crisis. The reason they had to leave is because their life was in danger."

David Smolansky, a Venezuela opposition leader who himself escaped in a journey through the jungle of Brazil, is now the coordinator of a migrant working group led by the Washington-based Organization of American States. He has been traveling throughout the Americas encouraging nations to apply the Cartagena Declaration, which was signed by several of the Latin American nations where Venezuelans are now arriving.

"If you give them refugee status, it will guarantee protection," he said. "I think it will create a commitment from the international community to cooperate more."

Accepting a broader definition of who constitutes a refugee is particularly relevant in Colombia, where large numbers of Venezuelans have fled.

Despite taking in an estimated 1.3 million Venezuelans, neighboring Colombia has received just 2,729 asylum claims, according to U.N. data. Many migrants are discouraged from applying because the process can take as long as two or three years. Others have been told only strict cases of political persecution or desertion will be acknowledged.

Gabriel Valles is one of those hoping his seemingly shoo-in case in Venezuela's neighboring country will be accepted.

The 32-year-old systems engineer and opposition activist spent more than two years in a Venezuelan high-security detention center run by the government's feared intelligence agency that is located five levels underground and known as "The Tomb."

There were no windows and the lights were almost always kept on, he recalled.

The only way he could tell if it might be day or night was by the hum of a metro line that ran nearby. If trains were passing by more frequently, he reasoned, it must be daytime.

"I always asked myself if the people who took the Caracas metro had any idea that below them exists a place where people are jailed," he said.

He was transferred to another jail before being released after nearly four years behind bars, and he later applied for asylum in Colombia.

Valles currently has permission to work and live in the country for 90 days. Even though it can be repeatedly renewed, he said companies have been reluctant to hire him, not having any guarantee that he will have legal status for more than three months.

Many of his compatriots are in even more dire straits: Over a third of Venezuelans in Colombia have no legal status, which often forces them to take low-paying and even abusive jobs on the black market.

"Venezuelans in Colombia should be treated as refugees," he said. "For many reasons other than whether or not there is an armed conflict."

Several nations, including Colombia, continue to forcibly remove migrants despite the dangers they might face back home, while other countries are confronting a myriad of additional issues.

The United States has received some 81,800 asylum requests from Venezuelans and President Donald Trump recently said his administration is considering granting legal temporary protective status to thousands of Venezuelans who have fled.

But Niels Frenzen, a law professor and director of the University of South California's immigration clinic, said the TPS push faces an uphill battle because of the political conundrum it creates for Trump and his tough-on-immigration stance.

"You have these opposing political desires, at least in the current U.S. government," he said.

In Peru, the number of asylum applications is soaring partly because it has become easier to make requests. At the border, Venezuelans can submit their documents for refugee status, which is one of the only ways they can enter after the implementation of new requirements that made it impossible to cross without a passport.

For Álvarez, applying for such status was his best option.

He said his wages working at a liquor store in Venezuela only provided his family with enough money to eat once a day in the afternoon. When his newborn son became anemic and malnourished, they decided to flee.

"I felt like my stomach was consuming itself," he said.

A relative living abroad sent him $450 for the lengthy journey to Lima, where he now works at a candle factory. Though he earns just $329 a month, he said his family eats three times a day.

Returning to Venezuela, he said, would be the equivalent of returning to a nation at war.

"The war is with those who sell food, with the hospitals, with the government," he said. "I want refugee status because I'm looking for a future for my son." </s> GENEVA: More than 70 million people were counted last year as displaced from their homes, a record that underestimates the real number of refugees and asylum seekers, the UN said on Wednesday.

In its annual global trends report, the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) described the figure of 70.8 million at the end of 2018 as "conservative", particularly because the number of people who fled Venezuela’s devastating crisis is undercounted.

At the end of 2017, by comparison, 68.5 million people were counted as being forcibly displaced by violence or persecution. The UNHCR attributed the increase partly to surging displacement in Ethiopia caused by inter-ethnic conflict, and in Venezuela, where thousands are fleeing every day amid an economic collapse that has triggered shortages of basic food and medicine.

An estimated 3.3 million people have left Venezuela since the start of 2016, according to the UN. UNHCR head Filippo Grandi told reporters in Geneva the figure of 70.8 million only includes Venezuelans who had officially applied for asylum -- roughly half a million people.

Overall, the number of displaced people in the world has doubled over the last 20 years and now exceeds the population of Thailand. The trend, Grandi said, continues to go in "the wrong direction". According to Amnesty International, a refugee is a person who flees their home country and cannot or will not return due to conflict or fear of persecution.

The report lists 41.3 million internally displaced people (IDPs), 25.9 million refugees, and 3.5 million asylum seekers -- those awaiting a decision on their bid for official refugee protection.

The countries with the most internally displaced people -- fleeing within their own countries -- are Syria, wracked by conflict since 2011 and Colombia, plagued by decades of violence, said the UNHCR.

The group of refugees, it added, included 5.5 million Palestinians scattered across several countries, notably Lebanon and Jordan. The best solution for a refugee is to be able to return home once their country stabilises, but Grandi noted that 20 percent have been in exile for more than two decades.

"We have become almost unable to make peace," the UNHCR chief said. "It is true there are new conflicts, new situations producing refugees..., but the old ones never get resolved," he added. "When is the last conflict that you remember was resolved?"

The UNHCR has at times sought to push back against the phrase "migrant crisis", especially as it has been applied to an influx of people into Europe via the Mediterranean sea. The agency has argued that while mass migration does pose serious challenges, it can be managed, particularly by wealthier nations. Grandi praised Germany for its acceptance of migrants and its efforts to "demystify" the notion that migration is unmanageable, "even when the numbers are very big." </s> Venezuelan migrants wait at an immigration control point on the Ecuador-Peru border, before the end of a special visa program and tightened entry requirements that demand passports, in Tumbes, Peru, June 14, 2019. Peru unexpectedly became the country with the second-highest number of asylum requests globally last year. (AP Photo/Martin Mejia)

LIMA, Peru (AP) — When Johan Álvarez was unable to provide more than one meal a day for his young family he knew it was time to leave Venezuela.

With his wife and infant son, the 25-year-old embarked on a lengthy journey by bus through three nations to reach Peru earlier this year.

Now they are among a growing swell of Venezuelans asking to be recognized as refugees.

A United Nations report released Wednesday finds that Venezuelans represent the largest group worldwide filing new asylum claims. Those fleeing the troubled South American nation made more than one in five of all asylum requests in 2018, higher than the number of claims made by people escaping Afghanistan and Syria.

But Venezuela is not in the midst of war and many foreign governments are reluctant to recognize the migrants as refugees.

On a recent overcast day in Peru’s capital, Álvarez filed into a line with about a hundred other Venezuelan arrivals filing for asylum, hoping his family’s tale of hunger back home would be enough to earn them refugee status.

“It’s not a war of arms,” he said. “But it is a war of survival.”

As Venezuela’s crisis drags on, the number fleeing is rising by alarming numbers. The United Nations estimates there are now 4 million Venezuelans living abroad — a quarter of whom have fled since November. The Organization of American States estimates the number could reach 7.5 million by the end of 2020.

The widely used definition of refugee is someone who has fled his or her homeland because of persecution, war or violence. Asylum claimants typically have to show that they cannot return due to a well-founded fear of persecution because of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular group.

But a more encompassing definition in the 1984 Cartagena Declaration includes people fleeing hunger and poverty resulting from the breakdown of rule of law — conditions which a much wider group of Venezuelans are experiencing.

To date, more than 460,000 Venezuelans have sought asylum, including nearly 350,000 in 2018 alone, according to the U.N. A large number of those claims are being filed in Peru, where some 800,000 Venezuelans now reside.

Last year, Peru received 192,500 claims — an astoundingly high number that has created a backlog. Just over 1,000 Venezuelans have gotten their asylum requests approved. Worldwide, only about 21,000 Venezuelans have been recognized as refugees to date.

The U.N. report released Wednesday notes the Venezuela migration crisis has increasingly taken on the “characteristics of a refugee situation” and says it is clear that international protection considerations “are applicable to the majority of Venezuelans.” Such protections could spare them from deportation.

“People fleeing Venezuela are doing so in increasingly complex circumstances,” said Federico Agusti, the U.N. refugee agency’s representative in Peru. “It’s not just a humanitarian crisis. The reason they had to leave is because their life was in danger.”

David Smolansky, a Venezuela opposition leader who himself escaped in a journey through the jungle of Brazil, is now the coordinator of a migrant working group led by the Washington-based Organization of American States. He has been traveling throughout the Americas encouraging nations to apply the Cartagena Declaration, which was signed by several of the Latin American nations where Venezuelans are now arriving.

“If you give them refugee status, it will guarantee protection,” he said. “I think it will create a commitment from the international community to cooperate more.”

Accepting a broader definition of who constitutes a refugee is particularly relevant in Colombia, where large numbers of Venezuelans have fled.

Despite taking in an estimated 1.3 million Venezuelans, neighboring Colombia has received just 2,729 asylum claims, according to U.N. data. Many migrants are discouraged from applying because the process can take as long as two or three years. Others have been told only strict cases of political persecution or desertion will be acknowledged.

Gabriel Valles is one of those hoping his seemingly shoo-in case in Venezuela’s neighboring country will be accepted.

The 32-year-old systems engineer and opposition activist spent more than two years in a Venezuelan high-security detention center run by the government’s feared intelligence agency that is located five levels underground and known as “The Tomb.”

There were no windows and the lights were almost always kept on, he recalled.

The only way he could tell if it might be day or night was by the hum of a metro line that ran nearby. If trains were passing by more frequently, he reasoned, it must be daytime.

“I always asked myself if the people who took the Caracas metro had any idea that below them exists a place where people are jailed,” he said.

He was transferred to another jail before being released after nearly four years behind bars, and he later applied for asylum in Colombia.

Valles currently has permission to work and live in the country for 90 days. Even though it can be repeatedly renewed, he said companies have been reluctant to hire him, not having any guarantee that he will have legal status for more than three months.

Many of his compatriots are in even more dire straits: Over a third of Venezuelans in Colombia have no legal status, which often forces them to take low-paying and even abusive jobs on the black market.

“Venezuelans in Colombia should be treated as refugees,” he said. “For many reasons other than whether or not there is an armed conflict.”

Several nations, including Colombia, continue to forcibly remove migrants despite the dangers they might face back home, while other countries are confronting a myriad of additional issues.

The United States has received some 81,800 asylum requests from Venezuelans and President Donald Trump recently said his administration is considering granting legal temporary protective status to thousands of Venezuelans who have fled.

But Niels Frenzen, a law professor and director of the University of South California’s immigration clinic, said the TPS push faces an uphill battle because of the political conundrum it creates for Trump and his tough-on-immigration stance.

“You have these opposing political desires, at least in the current U.S. government,” he said.

In Peru, the number of asylum applications is soaring partly because it has become easier to makerequests. At the border, Venezuelans can submit their documents for refugee status, which is one of the only ways they can enter after the implementation of new requirements that made it impossible to cross without a passport.

For Álvarez, applying for such status was his best option.

He said his wages working at a liquor store in Venezuela only provided his family with enough money to eat once a day in the afternoon. When his newborn son became anemic and malnourished, they decided to flee.

“I felt like my stomach was consuming itself,” he said.

A relative living abroad sent him $450 for the lengthy journey to Lima, where he now works at a candle factory. Though he earns just $329 a month, he said his family eats three times a day.

Returning to Venezuela, he said, would be the equivalent of returning to a nation at war.

“The war is with those who sell food, with the hospitals, with the government,” he said. “I want refugee status because I’m looking for a future for my son.” </s> Geneva: Developing countries, not rich Western nations, are bearing the brunt of the world's refugee crisis and are hosting most of the record 70.8 million displaced people who have fled war and persecution, the United Nations said on Wednesday.

The 2018 total is the highest in nearly 70 years and sadly, half of the world's forcibly displaced are children, the UN refugee agency said in its annual flagship report, Global Trends.

But the global figure, which comprises 25.9 million refugees, 41.3 million people uprooted within their homelands, and 3.5 million asylum-seekers, is "conservative", it said.

That is because it does not include most of the 4 million Venezuelans who have fled abroad since 2015 as they do not need visas or to lodge asylum claims to stay in most host countries. If the outflow continues, a total of 5 million Venezuelans could have left by year-end, it said. </s> One million people have left Venezuela since November as the exodus from the crisis-hit South American country has continued to skyrocket, UN agencies said on Friday.

The latest increase has brought the total number of Venezuelan migrants and refugees abroad to 4 million, up from 695,000 in late 2015, when the opposition’s election victory set the stage for intensifying conflict with President Nicolas Maduro.

According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), Colombia is the main destination, hosting 1.3 million Venezuelans, followed by Peru with 768,000.

Chile, Ecuador, Brazil and Argentina host hundreds of thousands, while Central American and Caribbean states have also taken in significant amounts of people from Venezuela.

“Latin American and Caribbean countries are doing their part to respond to this unprecedented crisis,’’ Eduardo Stein, the UN refugee and migration manager for Venezuela, said.

“But they cannot be expected to continue doing it without international help,’’ Stein said.

A crisis plan to help 2.2 million exiled Venezuelans as well as their host communities was launched late 2018.

So far, only 21 per cent of the needed 738 million dollars have been funded by donor countries.

Venezuela has experienced a massive economic and political crisis under Maduro, who won a second term in an election boycotted by most of the opposition a year ago.

The dire situation has pushed Venezuelans to leave the country amid hyperinflation and goods shortages. </s> Ah, the joys of socialism. Amidst a growing political and economic crisis, 4 million citizens have now fled Venezuela. According to a new report by the UN Refugee Agency and the International Organization for Migration, the pace at which citizens are leaving the country has been "staggering", rising from 695,000 people in 2015 to over 1 million people since November 2018.

The countries surrounding Venezuela have been forced to put regulatory measures in place to stop the flow of migrants, which will soon be the largest in Latin American history, according to Bloomberg. Should the exodus continue, it could surpass the 6.3 million refugees created by the Syrian civil war.

Over 12 countries met last year to address the flow of migrants that is putting pressure on resources and stoking tensions in the region. A universal policy for dealing with the problem has yet to be enacted and, on Thursday, Peru said it would increase controls later this month by requiring Venezuelans to apply for humanitarian visas before crossing the border.

Colombia remains the primary destination for those leaving Venezuela, and it now hosts 1.3 million people who have fled the country. Peru hosts 768,000; Chile 288,000; Ecuador 263,000; Brazil 168,000 and Argentina 130,000. Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean have also seen an influx of Venezuelan migrants.

Eduardo Stein, the joint UNHCR-IOM Special Representative for Venezuelan refugees and migrants said: “These alarming figures highlight the urgent need to support host communities in the receiving countries. The countries are doing their part to respond to this unprecedented crisis but they cannot be expected to continue doing it without international help.”

Just days ago we reported that Venezuela had defaulted on $750 million in gold-backed swaps with Deutsche Bank. As part of a financing agreement signed in 2016 which we profiled here, Venezuela received a cash loan from Deutsche Bank and put up 20 tons of gold as collateral. The agreement, which was set to expire in 2021, was settled early due to missed interest payments as Venezuela has now effectively run out of foreign reserves.

Additionally, we reported recently how difficult it was to get even $1 worth of Venezuelan Bolivars anywhere in the country: the reason - hyperinflation in the country is alive and well according to the Bloomberg Venezuela Cafe con Leche index. Finally, back in April, we documented the "Zombie Apocalypse" that gas gipped the country in photos of Caracas in darkness. A series of AP photographs entitled As the sun sets, Venezuela’s capital empties presented Caracas as essentially becoming a ghost town after sunset, depicting its infrastructure collapse and lack of services like electricity, water, and public transport. </s> More than 70 million people were displaced from their homes as of the end of 2018 ― the highest number recorded by the United Nations Refugee Agency, UNHCR.

In a report released Wednesday, the U.N. refugee agency put the number of those who have been uprooted by war, persecution and other factors at 70.8 million ― twice as many as 20 years ago and over 2 million more than in 2017.

The new figure included nearly 26 million refugees, about 41 million people “internally displaced” ― forced to leave their homes but still living within their country’s borders ― and 3.5 million asylum seekers or people awaiting decisions on their application for sanctuary in another country.

“What we are seeing in these figures is further confirmation of a longer-term rising trend in the number of people needing safety from war, conflict and persecution,” U.N. high commissioner for refugees Filippo Grandi said in a news release.

He noted that the “language around refugees and migrants” is “often divisive,” and urged the world’s nations to “redouble our solidarity with the many thousands of innocent people who are forced to flee their homes each day.”

Venezuelans wait to pass immigration control at the Ecuador-Peru border -- late last week. Economic and political turmoil in Venezuela has spurred en exodic from that country -- contributing to the world's overall displacement trend.

Syrians were again the largest population of displaced people, with 13 million people displaced by the country’s years-long war, according to the UNHCR report.

More than 3 million Venezuelans also were displaced as of last year amid the country’s economic and political crisis ― the biggest exodus in the region’s recent history, per UNHCR.

As in previous years, the U.S. received the largest number of asylum applicants of any country in 2018, with more than 250,000 such claims ― about half of which were made by people from Central America and Mexico.

Under the Trump administration’s recent “remain in Mexico” policy, thousands of asylum seekers looking for safety in the U.S. have been forced to wait in Mexico as their claims are processed. Advocates have raised concerns about the dangerous conditions in border cities such as Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez, where more asylum seekers will now have to wait.

“Any human being that claims to be fleeing from war, conflict and persecution certainly has a right to have his or her story heard, and must be allowed to access safe territory and efficient asylum procedures that are fair,” UNHCR spokesperson Christopher Boian told HuffPost, speaking about the broader issue of record numbers of displaced people worldwide.

“If you want to contemplate if this has major implications for the future of humanity, consider that fact,” he said. “This will have repercussions for a long time to come.”
The UN predicts that over five million Venezuelans, over 15% of the nation's population, will have left the country by the end of 2019 since the start of the crisis in Venezuela—the total at the end of 2018 was 3.3 million. One million have left the country since November, with a daily average of 5,000 departures. Additionally, over 20% of all worldwide UN asylum requests are from Venezuelans; 350,000 applied in 2018 alone.