| Disputes - international | claims all of the area west of the Essequibo River in Guyana, preventing any discussion of a maritime boundary; Guyana has expressed its intention to join Barbados in asserting claims before the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea that Trinidad and Tobago's maritime boundary with Venezuela extends into their waters; dispute with Colombia over maritime boundary and Venezuelan administered Los Monjes Islands near the Gulf of Venezuela; Colombian organized illegal narcotics and paramilitary activities penetrate Venezuela's shared border region; US, France, and the Netherlands recognize Venezuela's granting full effect to Aves Island, thereby claiming a Venezuelan Economic Exclusion Zone/continental shelf extending over a large portion of the eastern Caribbean Sea; Dominica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines protest Venezuela's full effect claim |
| Illicit drugs | small-scale illicit producer of opium and coca for the processing of opiates and coca derivatives; however, large quantities of cocaine, heroin, and marijuana transit the country from Colombia bound for US and Europe; significant narcotics-related money-laundering activity, especially along the border with Colombia and on Margarita Island; active eradication program primarily targeting opium; increasing signs of drug-related activities by Colombian insurgents on border |
| Refugees and internally displaced persons | refugees (country of origin): 67,622 (Colombia) (2019) note: As of December 2020, more than 800,000 Venezuelans have applied for asylum worldwide |
| Trafficking in persons | current situation: Venezuela is a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children subjected to sex trafficking and forced labor; Venezuelan women and girls are trafficked within the country for sexual exploitation, lured from the nation's interior to urban and tourist areas; women from Colombia, Peru, Haiti, China, and South Africa are also reported to have been sexually exploited in Venezuela; some Venezuelan women are transported to Caribbean islands, particularly Aruba, Curacao, and Trinidad & Tobago, where they are subjected to forced prostitution; some Venezuelan children are forced to beg on the streets or work as domestic servants, while Ecuadorian children, often from indigenous communities, are subjected to forced labor; the government provided support to FARC dissidents and the ELN, which grew through the recruitment of child soldiers and exploitation of children in sex trafficking and forced labor; Illegal armed groups lure children in vulnerable conditions and dire economic circumstances with gifts and promises of basic sustenance to later recruit them into their ranks tier rating: Tier 3 — Venezuela does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and is not making significant efforts to do so; the government created a specialized prosecutor’s office to oversee trafficking investigations and prosecutions; authorities began legal proceedings against three complicit officials in a notable case; however, the government did not assist any victims or investigate, prosecute, or convict any traffickers; little effort was made to curb the forced recruitment of Venezuelan children by Colombian armed groups operating illegally in Venezuela; authorities made little effort to screen Cuban medical professionals for trafficking indicators as the Cuban Government may have forced them to work by withholding their documentation, and coercing them to falsify medical records (2020) |
Source: CIA World Factbook
This page was last updated on September 18, 2021
