CUCUTA, Colombia _ The United States is giving Colombia an additional $6 million in aid to deal with the growing number of Venezuelans crossing the border trying to escape their nation's social unrest and collapsing economy, officials announced Monday.
Speaking in the Colombian border city of Cucuta, Mark Green, the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, USAID, called the situation a "man-made crisis" caused by the policies of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
"We're standing on the front lines of one of the largest displacements of people in the history of Latin America," Green said, after visiting the international bridge in Cucuta, where some 70,000 Venezuelans cross the border every day.
The new funding will go toward nutrition and health programs along the Colombia-Venezuela border through the World Food Program and other local partners.
Just yards from the international border, Green visited a food kitchen that serves more than 2,700 Venezuelans every day and a health center that provides first-aid care and free vaccinations.
"They are fleeing hunger, lack of medicine and lack of opportunities," he said. "And fundamentally, they are fleeing ... a despotic and dysfunctional regime."
The money is in addition to the nearly $16 million that Washington earmarked in April to help Venezuelan migrants in Colombia and Brazil. The United States has provided more than $56 million in humanitarian and development aid to the region since 2017 to deal with the Venezuelan crisis.
Venezuela's economic collapse _ featuring the world's highest inflation and chronic food and medicine shortages _ has forced more than a million people to flee to other countries in recent years.
Colombia alone estimates that it has absorbed almost 1 million people who have left Venezuela in the last two years. The exodus is straining Colombia's healthcare system, schools and other social services, particularly along the border.
Venezuela has downplayed the exodus and blames its economic woes on U.S. financial sanctions, which have kept it from refinancing its debt.
While Venezuela sits on the world's largest oil reserves, decades of failed economic policies and corruption have left the once-rich nation struggling to stay afloat.
