One day in May 2018, Anmicary Torres was in tears as she hung up her scrubs and stethoscope, knowing that she would probably never work as a doctor again. She told the journalist Stephania Corpi that this was the day she decided to leave Venezuela—after treating an eight-year-old child who weighed four kilograms (less than nine pounds). She would not let that happen to her daughter. Thousands are leaving the country every day to escape the political and humanitarian crisis that has shaken every aspect of their existence. Venezuelans have been facing severe food insecurity for years; according to Caritas, only 3 percent of households can afford three daily meals. The inflation rate had soared to 1.37 million percent by the end of 2018, according to the International Monetary Fund. In other words, if you are paid in bolivars, your money is worth close to nothing. In a recent National Survey on Living Conditions, 94 percent of respondents said that their income is insufficient to cover their living costs. Some 7.3 million households—more than 16 million people, or nearly half the population—were enrolled in the Local Committees for Supply and Production (CLAP) subsidized food system in 2018, a 22 percent increase from the previous year.(CLAP is notorious as a vehicle of corruption and a reward system for Maduro’s supporters.) Increasing poverty and food insecurity have resulted in 32 percent of babies under six months of age and 49 percent of pregnant women suffering from moderate to severe malnutrition. These conditions sparked more than 10,000 protests in 2018, which were met with repression and lethal state violence. Emigration rates are skyrocketing. Hundreds of thousands have sold all their belongings to pay for bus tickets to neighboring countries. Others set out on foot, some leaving behind their parents and children. This has become the largest international forced displacement of people in Latin American history. According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the Venezuelan exodus to other Latin American countries increased by close to 1,000 percent between 2015 and 2017. A joint report issued in November 2018 by IOM and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said 3 million Venezuelans had left the country since the beginning of the crisis. They acknowledged that this estimate is conservative, since official data can be incomplete and often do not account for migrants with irregular status. Other sources estimate that the exodus had already surpassed 4 million people by the end of 2017 and is closer to 5 million or more today. According to IOM and UNHCR, as of November 2018 the countries hosting the most Venezuelans were Colombia, with more than 1 million, and Peru, with over 600,000. More than 222,000 Venezuelans were officially registered in Ecuador, 130,000 in Argentina, 100,000 in Chile, and 85,000 in Brazil.

The scale of Venezuelan displacement is comparable to the Syrian refugee crisis of 2015, according to Matthew Reynolds, UNHCR’s regional representative for the United States and the Caribbean. But the international attention given to the Venezuelan crisis lags far behind in terms of both media coverage and financial support. Although most countries in the region have recently adopted legislative frameworks that would allow for the recognition of Venezuelans as refugees, they have largely opted to respond to the in-