Echoes of Global Silence: Is there protection and safety for Venezuelan children and adolescents?

As the crisis in Venezuela deepens, an increasing number of children urgently needs shelter, protection, and access to basic services, including food, medicine, clean water, and sanitation. Children and young people in transit are particularly at risk of criminal activity or being separated from their families. The consequences of the humanitarian crisis for children could be devastating for the country's future. The child labor problem was fueled by a mass migration of more than five million Venezuelans that turned many children into livelihoods for their families. The pandemic has aggravated risk factors for child labor. The work ranges from working in dumps to agricultural fields, adding that children in rural areas are more likely to depend on public assistance and are at greater risk of being recruited by gangs. Some Venezuelan women and girls are traveling for hours or days to cross the Colombian border and earn money as sex workers. The complex and multifaceted reality of international migration reveals enormous challenges that directly affect the lives of children and adolescents, especially the most vulnerable, and demand urgent responses from the constituted powers and civil society in the face of countless human rights violations those people experience.