Beneath a veneer of luxury, leisure and comfort, the Caribbean tourist island of Aruba hides another world, where migrants from crisis-torn Venezuela are denied their human right to asylum and refuge.
Aruba now has more refugees and migrants from Venezuela per local population than any country in the world, according to UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency: 159 displaced people per 1,000 inhabitants.
Situated about 30 kilometres off the coast of Venezuela’s Paraguaná Peninsula, Aruba is a small island of 180 square kilometres and around 110,000 inhabitants. Formerly a Dutch dependency, it’s now an autonomous country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Semi-desert and infertile, it’s always been a place of trade and commerce with the mainland.
