Angelina Jolie visits displaced Venezuelan refugees fleeing the Maduro regime during three-day trip to Peru

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Published on Wednesday, 24 October 2018 03:29

Written by Daily mail

         Angelina Jolie has spent the past three days on a state visit to Peru meeting Venezuelan refugees that were forced to flee their crisis-stricken homeland.Sent as a United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Special Envoy to Peru's capital Lima, the actress and philanthropist said she was stunned to see the refugee crisis up-close.An estimated 2.6million Venezuelans have fled their home nation since 2015 following President Nicolas Maduro's regime and a crippling economic crisis - and 400,000 of those migrants have settled in Peru.'This region is facing one of the largest mass migrations in its history. The crisis is all the more shocking for being predictable and preventable,' she said in a statement alongside Peru's foreign minister on Tuesday. Jolie met with migrants in shelters, stopped at the border crossing in the north of the country, and on Tuesday met with Peru's President Martin Vizcarra to discuss solutions to the migrant crisis spreading across South America.'After having spoken to so many people it's clear to me, very clear, that this is not a movement by choice,' she said. 'I heard stories of people dying because of a lack of medical care and medicine: cancer patients whose chemotherapy was abruptly stopped, diabetes sufferers without access to insulin, children without basic antibiotics, people starving, and tragic accounts of violence and persecution,' she added. 'None of the Venezuelans I met want charity. They want an opportunity to help themselves,' she added. The exodus of Venezuelans into neighboring countries has led to a 'shocking' migrant crisis. According to the UNHCR, this is the largest population movement in Latin America's recent history.
         Peru was one of the first countries to create a special residency program for incoming Venezuelans. But now that the influx of Venezuelans climbs to nearly half a million, Peru is tightening their entry requirement out of security concerns and is shortening the residency program. In her speech Jolie acknowledged the severity of the crisis saying 'As in nearly every displacement crisis, the countries that have fewer resources are being asked to do the most.'She also praised Ecuador and Colombia as 'very generous' for opening their doors to displaced Venezuelan migrants.She said that in her time in Peru she was in awe of how Venezuelans say they didn't want to leave their country. 'The message that I heard consistently was, "we didn’t want to leave, we had to leave,"' she said. She praised Peru's migrant programs and urged neighboring countries to continue their work.  'Most of all, wherever we live, we need our governments to do more to address the conflict and insecurity that is creating refugees, so that people can return to their countries. In my experience the vast majority of refugees want to do just that: they want to return home,' she added. Jolie visited Latin America back in 2012 during a humanitarian mission to Ecuador, which marked her third visit to with Colombian refugees in the region.'

 source : Daily Mail