Amnesty International has made a request to Mexico’s president to not impose its visa requirement from Venezuelans to enter the country. The organization sent a letter to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador asking that he reconsider his decision to apply visa requests for Venezuelan citizens.
The international organization says his decision to request the visas“may have serious repercussions” on the lives of those seeking international protection. Amnesty International highlighted the serious human rights crisis and the worsening complex humanitarian emergency in Venezuela, which has forced more than six million people to leave the country in recent years.
They stated that repeated reports show massive human rights violations continue to seriously affect the majority of the population. “In addition to this, it is likely that people will not even be able to obtain documents required by the Mexican government to apply for a visa,” the organization added.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, it is estimated that more than seven million people in Venezuela need humanitarian assistance, although it reports that the figure is likely to rise to 8.4 million in 2022
Given the magnitude of the refugee crisis, Amnesty International has urged regional governments to allow access to protection application procedures to all persons arriving from Venezuela and to apply effective protection measures for those persons and to ensure that are not returned.
The international body argued that “the imposition of entry visas could jeopardize the right to request asylum of Venezuelans.”
“From Amnesty International, we call on you to reconsider the visa requirement decision, as well as to strengthen the asylum system for all people seeking international protection in Mexican territory, without discrimination and in line with Mexico’s international obligations in human rights matter,” they said.
