Briefing

Colombia, the Good Neighboor

Colombian President Iván Duque announced that he’ll grant Temporary Protection Status to benefit almost one million Venezuelans and will be valid for ten years; Chilean president Sebastián Piñera reiterated he wants to end the immigration crisis, caused mainly by Venezuelans.

Naky Soto
  • Colombian President Iván Duque announced that he’ll grant Temporary Protection Status, a measure can benefit almost one million people and will be valid for ten years. The TPS will allow Venezuelans to have access to healthcare and education and the job market. Duque said that this TPS also gives the Executive the certainty that, after the registration period, undocumented migrants can be deported. 
  • UN High Commissioner Filippo Grandi said the measure was historical and assured that the TPS will mark a before-and-after for our Venezuelan migrants. Guaidó thanked the government for ratifying their commitment and will to help Venezuelans. U.S. Secretary Antony Blinken celebrated the announcement and added that the U.S.  supports Colombia in its endeavor to aid refugees and migrants. 
  • José Brito, president of the commission investigating the AN elected in 2015, announced that NGOs (he didn’t specify which) will have to give statements to see what happened to the humanitarian aid. 
  • Labor minister Eduardo Piñate said that Maduro has to legislate home office work, to prevent this type of workers from evading existing legislation.
  • ANC-imposed prosecutor general Tarek William Saab said that he has a list of draft laws to “make progress” in human rights, and is waiting for the right time to give them to Maduro’s AN. 
  • Fedecámaras president Ricardo Cusanno reiterated that the ideas they’ll be giving to the dialogue committee of Maduro’s AN go deeper to solve every link of the productive chain. 
  • John Magdaleno thinks Maduro has two incentives to negotiate. He wants sanction relief and he wants an “economic reform” that includes the private sector. Magdaleno said that the opposition needs political and social organization and strategic coordination if they want to participate in the upcoming elections. He added that the government won’t grant ideal electoral conditions, but by rallying the people to express their will in an election, some changes could come. 
  • The Azul Positivo team has been detained for 28 days. They were arbitrarily detained for doing humanitarian work as associates of international organizations in Zulia. On Monday, a group of protesters demanded their immediate release at the Public Ministry headquarters. 
  • Jornars Baduel’s sister, who’s the son of former minister Raúl Baduel and who’s in jail for Operation Gedeón, denounced SEBIN is torturing her brother. She said that her brother has a lot of pain in his testicles and his arm is tearing off, as a consequence of torture. Despite that, he hasn’t gotten medical attention. 
  • The Venezuelan Student Confederation started protests in various states to denounce the destruction of institutions, the lack of autonomy, the humanitarian emergency and the low wages for professors. On Friday, February 12th, they’ll take the streets again. 
  • Iván Duque also announced the creation of an elite command to fight drug trafficking and FARC and ELN dissidents operating in Venezuela.
  • The IMF warned that Latin America and the Caribbean won’t recover until 2023, because of the high impact of the pandemic on jobs. They said that the GDP won’t recover until 2025, later than the rest of the world, said Alejandro Werner.
  • GAO said that U.S. sanctions did impact our economy. Even though they didn’t estimate the damage, they mentioned other factors of the collapse that’s been going on for a decade, including Maduro’s poor management. At the order of Democrat lawmakers, their evaluation will be published “when President Biden is ready to make adjustments on the Venezuelan policy,” said AFP. 
  • Germany, Sweden and Poland announced they expelled Russian diplomats as a response to the Kremlin’s measure, amid the tensions for the arrest of opposition leader  Alexei Navalny.
  • Former U.S. President Donald Trump must undergo a second political trial process for “promoting insurrection” after the events at the Capitol on January 6th. The process will begin in the Senate on Tuesday. Trump said he won’t testify before the Senate but made changes to his legal team. 
  • Chilean president Sebastián Piñera reiterated he wants to end the immigration crisis, caused mainly by Venezuelans; who have been living on the border with Bolivia. “We want to end illegal immigration,” insisted Piñera and warned it’s necessary to approve a more strict migration law.

Naky Soto

Naky gets called Naibet at home and at the bank. She coordinates training programs for an NGO. She collects moments and turns them into words. She has more stories than freckles.

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