Page 25 - Preliminary Report on the Venezuelan Migrant and Refugee Crisis in the Region

Financing is key for effective integration of migrants and refugees and, equally important, for

mitigating possible costs of the massive flow of migrants and refugees. In the case of the Syrian

refugee crisis, the purpose of the aid has been to provide humanitarian assistance and a

number of basic services to refugees in countries such as Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey, the vast
majority of them in urban areas, with a much smaller number in refugee camps. In the

Venezuelan case there are no such camps, nor is it our intention, in any way, to recommend

their implementation. Several studies have suggested that integrating migrants and refugees is
made harder when they are confined to camps isolated from urban areas or far from receiving

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communities.

Indeed, the possibility of the region accessing resources in the form of grants or soft loans is

critical for expanding basic services and infrastructure (such as schools and hospitals, for
example) in receiving communities, in order to ease the reception and integration of the rapid

and massive flow of Venezuelan migrants and refugees. The absence of large-scale financing for

national, regional, and local governments in receiving countries in the region could lead to a
collapse in public services, which could, in turn, provoke a backlash from local populations

averse to receiving Venezuelans. That is a scenario that the region’s countries would like to

avoid.

43 Gayle, Damien. David Miliband: close the world’s refugee camps, The Guardian, May 14, 2016,
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/may/14/close-worlds-refugee-camps-says-david-miliband. ;
Gordon, Grant and Ravi Gurumurthy. “Owen Barder: we need an alternative to refugee camps.” Rescue.org,
August 28, 2018, https://www.rescue.org/displaced-podcast/owen-barder-we-need-alternative-refugee-
camps. ; The United Nations Refugee Agency. “Policy on Alternatives to Camps.” July 2014,
https://www.unhcr.org/5422b8f09.html.

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