Ecuador extends to May 31, 2019 emergency due to migratory flow of Venezuelans

Ecuadornews:

The Government of Ecuador announced on Wednesday May 1 that it has extended until the end of May 2019 the declaration of emergency that applies since last year in several provinces to address the unusual flow of Venezuelan migrants to the country.

This was announced by the Vice Minister of Human Mobility of the Ecuadorian Foreign Ministry, Santiago Chávez, who stated that the declaration will be extended until May 31.

This measure, added the diplomat, will rule for the provinces of Carchi (border with Colombia), Pichincha (whose capital is Quito) and El Oro (bordering with Peru), which were the most affected a few months ago by the unusual mass flow of citizens Venezuelans According to figures from the Ecuadorian Foreign Ministry, in the last four years more than 1.3 million Venezuelans have entered Ecuador, of which some 250,000 still remain in the national territory.

Last March, the Constitutional Court, the highest legal control body in Ecuador, suspended provisionally, the application of a series of requirements that the Government had ordered last year to regulate the entry of Venezuelan citizens.

The Court accepted a claim of unconstitutionality filed by the Ombudsman’s Office and accepted its request to temporarily suspend several ministerial agreements that required additional requirements to enter, such as updated passports and a criminal record, among others.

In the lawsuit, the Ombudsman claimed that these ministerial agreements violated “the principle of equality and non-discrimination” established in the Constitution.

He also noted that the internal and regional regulations allowed the entry and circulation of South American citizens with the sole presentation of the identity document, so applying the additional requirements to Venezuelans generated “differential treatment that is discriminatory” and violated the principle of equality.

The passport requirement and of the so-called “judicial past” were also questioned by human rights organizations, which questioned whether the latter was required following a case of feminicide that occurred in January against a pregnant woman at the hands of her Venezuelan partner, which generated xenophobic reactions in some sectors of Ecuadorian society. (I)

Source: https://www.elcomercio.com/actualidad/emergencia-migracion-venezolanos-movilidad-humana.html