The UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, said on Wednesday that the onset of winter, along with the disastrous consequences of COVID-19, posed a direct threat to the health and livelihoods of Venezuelans stranded in southern Latin America.
Despite border controls, Venezuelans continue to travel along highways into Andean states and Brazil in search of safety and a place to call home. UNHCR is stepping up its efforts across the region to assist people in dealing with the impending winter.
In Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay, about two million Venezuelan refugees and migrants have settled. COVID-19 infection and fatality rates are among the highest in the world in certain of these countries.
Venezuelans have been mostly included in national health initiatives, but with hospitals at capacity, access to care for other illnesses, such as those connected with the winter season, has become increasingly difficult.
Thunderstorms, heavy rains, and below-freezing temperatures have already wreaked havoc on Chile’s central and southern regions. Nighttime temperatures are already well below freezing along Venezuela’s northern border, where Venezuelans come on foot without suitable clothes. The UNHCR is working to distribute 1,000 winter kits and 8,600 thermal blankets, as well as emergency shelter, cash support, and electronic vouchers for the purchase of heaters, fuel, and winter clothing.
Young people being deceived into forced labor by criminal gangs, primarily involving illegal work in Chinese-controlled special zones in Cambodia, has become a pressing issue not only in Vietnam but across Southeast Asia.
Vanessa Frazier, Permanent Representative of Malta to the United Nations, introduces a resolution at the Security Council meeting on children and armed conflict.
Macabre killings, casual torture, misdirection and snooping were part of “the anatomy of enforced disappearances” linked to deposed Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, an inquiry commission said in its first report.
In 2024, there was a slowdown in the number of migrants traveling from Latin America to the United States, in part due to new policies and controls put in place in the so-called transit countries that migrants pass through on their way north. Migration dynamics are being reshaping by these measures as well as the new U.S. presidential administration’s promises of mass deportations.
Antony J. Blinken, Secretary of State of the United States of America, chairs the United Nations Security Council meeting on Maintenance of International Peace and Security and Artificial Intelligence.
The front line is continually shifting in the Donetsk region of Eastern Ukraine, and Russian shelling is causing more and more damage to nearby cities.Active fighting is putting residents in danger in Dobropillia, while residents of Kostyantynivka, around 7 kilometers from the contact line, frequently have disruptions in heating fuel.
Danny Danon, Permanent Representative of Israel to the United Nations, briefs reporters prior to the United Nations Security Council meeting on the Middle East.
Vanuatu on Wednesday took stock of damage from a powerful 7.3 magnitude earthquake that killed at least 14 people and collapsed buildings in the capital, as the first trickle of international assistance began arriving in the disaster-prone Pacific nation.
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