More than 1.7 million Venezuelans had settled in Colombia as of late 2020, of whom 51% were male and 49% were female. Some 24% of the Venezuelan population are children and 37% were youth. From 1 January to 31 December 2020, UNHCR registered in its corporate registration system, PRIMES, 18,845 personse with specific protection needs who approached UNHCR and its partners.
By 2020, over 716,650 Venezuelans had a Special Stay Permit (PEP) which allowed them to stay in Colombia for up to two years with access to basic services and the labour market. The Border Mobility Card (TMF) enabled over 4 million Venezuelans to enter Colombia for up to seven days to acquire basic goods and services. According to Migración Colombia, no TMFs were issued after the 13 March 2020 border closure for the rest of 2020.
The measures adopted to prevent the spread of COVID-19, including border closures and restrictions on the number of entries and exits through humanitarian corridors, led Venezuelans to transit through informal border crossings or trochas. According to Migración Colombia, as of 28 December, 124,633 Venezuelans had returned to Venezuela from or through Colombia.
There were some 20,000 asylum claims (cumulative figure) pending by 31 December 2020, and around 1,000 recognized refugees in the country, mainly from Venezuela (30%), Cuba (22%), Ethiopia, (5%), Nicaragua (4%) and El Salvador (3%). The National Commission for Refugees, or CONARE, recognized 351 people in 2020, the highest number in its history, nearly all Venezuelan. Around 12,000 people claimed asylum in Colombia in 2020, 99% of them from Venezuela.
Although more than 845,000 Colombians and dual nationals are estimated to have returned from Venezuela since 2017, the number of assisted refugee returns remained minimal in 2020 due to COVID-19 restrictions.
As of December 2020, over 9 million people were registered as victims of Colombia’s 50-year armed conflict (18% of the total population), of which some 88% (8 million) have experienced internal displacement. According to UNHCR monitoring, in 2020, there were 86 large-group internal displacements, displacing at least 21,861 people (53% Afro-Colombian, 23% small-scale farmers 22% members of indigenous peoples and 2% refugees and migrants from Venezuela). More than 69,000 people were confined in 2020, mostly Afro-Colombians (40%) and small-scale farmers (32%). These figures represent a significant increase compared to the same period in 2019, when approximately 6,000 families or 25,000 people were confined. The number of new forced displacements, including individual and group displacements registered by the Colombian government was 70,865 in 2020; the actual number could in fact be higher due to delays between an event and the documentation of its impact.
IDPs often settle with Venezuelan refugees and migrants in many of Colombia’s most underserved areas at borders and urban centres, which increase pressure on already over-stretched local services and economies. Also, these areas present specific risks for Venezuelans, including cases of individual and large-scale displacements, homicides, threats, and gender-based violence, and human trafficking. Border closures have forced many to cross irregularly, exposing Venezuelans and Colombian returnees to security risks and exploitation. Despite the existence of complaint mechanisms, Venezuelans in many cases prefer not to inform the authorities, given their irregular situation, lack of knowledge of those mechanisms, or lack of response from the institutions.
In preventing statelessness, UNHCR bolstered the Government of Colombia’s widely applauded initiative launched in 2019 to enable children born in Colombia to Venezuelan parents after January 2015 to acquire Colombian nationality. As of December 2020, over 50,791 children have acquired Colombian nationality by birth.