Venezuelans face a gauntlet in the Dominican Republic

Santo Domingo.– The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) on Friday urged regional measures to deal with the situation of thousands of Venezuelans who’ve had to emigrate fleeing their country’s political and economic crisis.

“There’s a very dramatic situation of migration of Venezuelans throughout the region,” said Luis Ernesto Vargas, second vice president of the IACHR, during a hearing in Santo Domingo focused on Venezuelan migrants.

Vargas stressed that Venezuelan women “are being trafficked, especially for sexual exploitation.”

The session, which forms part of the IACHR hearing period, was held a week after Dominican authorities rescued 21 Venezuelan women, including minors, who were sexually exploited in a bar near the Punta Cana resort region (east).

It’s the third group of Venezuelan women rescued from Dominican Republic brothels in the last two years, during which thousands of Venezuelan migrants arrived in the Caribbean country in search of work.

During the hearing various human rights organizations narrated situations of violence that Venezuelan migrants have faced in Brazil, labor exploitation in Ecuador and bureaucratic difficulties to regularize their situation in Bolivia and the Dominican Republic.

Ana María Rodríguez, a Venezuelan migrant, said the red tape in her country to issue identity documents keeps the immigrants from obtaincy residence permits in the Dominican Republic, so they don’t have access to formal work and adequate health services.