«PuenteInternacional Simón Bolívar» de Andrés Urdaneta. Own work. GFDL via Wikimedia Commons.
On 21 August, Venezuelan president Maduro decided to close the border between Colombian Norte de Santander and Venezuelan Táchira, declare a state of emergency and deport Colombians illegally living in Venezuela. Thousands of troops were deployed. This crisis confirms a sad reality: civilian borderlanders suffer most from such measures.
Why did these people leave Colombia in the first place? Many fled the war that Bogotá wages against guerrillas. This is a triple tragedy: they flee violence, are expelled from where they sought refuge and return to State neglect in Colombia: to overfilled shelters, insufficient food and inadequate institutional capacity to cope with an influx of people who return to where they came from. After all, Colombia holds the record for the second biggest displacement crisis world-wide.
