Venezuela crisis is 'on the scale of Syria,' UNHCR says

The Venezuelan exodus into Colombia, Brazil, and throughout Latin America is comparable to the migrant and refugee crisis caused by the civil war in Syria, a United Nations Refugee Agency official said Tuesday. “For UNHCR, this is one of our largest crises. This is on the scale of Syria,” said Matthew Reynolds, UNHCR’s regional representative for the United States and the Caribbean, in Washington, D.C. “In its modern history, Latin America has never experienced an exodus of this dimension.” An estimated 1.6 million people have fled Venezuela since 2015, and Reynolds said UNHCR expects an additional 1.8 million to leave this year. More…