Cucuta, Colombia, Sep 1 (EFE).- Colombian Foreign Minister Holmes Trujillo said here Saturday that the international community must urgently create a humanitarian emergency fund to aid the exodus of Venezuelans, and also that a special UN envoy should be designated to coordinate that multilateral action.
Those were his principal conclusions after a two-day visit to the Venezuelan border that ended Saturday in the frontier city of Cucuta, where he went across the Simon Bolivar International Bridge.
According to UN estimates, close to 2.3 million Venezuelans have fled their country because of the crisis, a situation made worse by the closing of the Peruvian border to all whose passports have expired.
More that 1 million Venezuelans have settled in Colombia, and another 35,000 cross the common border every day.
Some make the crossing to leave their country forever, while others go to Colombia to buy food and medicines, which puts a lot of pressure on border communities.
With that in mind, Trujillo insisted on the importance of understanding the regional and global magnitude of the Venezuelan exodus, for which reason he considers that the measures to be taken cannot be national but must a cooperative undertaking of all the countries affected.
He also said that at the next UN General Assembly, Colombia will promote a meeting to which countries of the area will be invited, along with donors and multilateral financial organizations, in order to create a humanitarian fund.
He also recalled that next week he wll visit Washington and later will travel to the European Union (EU) to discuss the matter.
On his visit Saturday, Trujillo was accompanied by the resident coordinator of the United Nations System in Colombia, Martin Santiago, who asked for a regional response to the crisis caused by the exodus of Venezuela due to its scale, magnitude and consequences.
According to Santiago, the consequences of Venezuelans fleeing their country “don’t just affect Colombia,” but rather “all the countries of the region,” which makes it necessary to find “answers to a situation that is already exceptional,” because the migration has far exceeded the dimensions that were estimated at the beginning.