RYAN BA­CHOO

Lead Ed­i­tor—News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

For­mer Ger­man Am­bas­sador to T&T, Ute König, says in­te­gra­tion will be key for this coun­try if it is to deal with Venezue­lan mi­grants.

König re­cent­ly end­ed her stint in T&T, hav­ing served as Germ an Am­bas­sador from Sep­tem­ber 2019 to Ju­ly 2023. She spoke ex­clu­sive­ly to Guardian Me­dia just as she wrapped up her mis­sion in T&T.

Ger­many has faced its own chal­lenges deal­ing with refugees. Last Oc­to­ber, the Ger­man gov­ern­ment pledged to pro­vide more sup­port to cities and towns strug­gling to house the more than 1.1 mil­lion refugees and mi­grants who have ar­rived in that coun­try in 2022, most­ly from war-torn Ukraine but al­so oth­er coun­tries such as Syr­ia and Afghanistan.

Ac­cord­ing to a Unit­ed Na­tions High Com­mis­sion­er for Refugees re­port in 2022, T&T hosts more than 34,000 Venezue­lan refugees.

“I think you did a re­mark­able process in reg­is­ter­ing the refugees here. That was hap­pen­ing be­fore I came and my col­leagues told me about the queues around the Oval, and of course the sit­u­a­tion has not changed. We don’t know how many peo­ple are here that are not reg­is­tered be­cause they con­tin­ue to come and peo­ple who trav­el south tell me there are boats com­ing over every night.”

In mid-June, the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty ex­tend­ed the work per­mits for Venezue­lan na­tion­als who reg­is­tered in the 2019 ex­er­cise for a fur­ther six months, un­til De­cem­ber 31. The orig­i­nal mi­grant per­mits were on­ly sup­posed to be valid for one year and should have ex­pired in 2020. How­ev­er, giv­en the pan­dem­ic, there have been mul­ti­ple six-month ex­ten­sions since then.

A month lat­er, Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs, Dr Amery Browne, an­nounced that the Gov­ern­ment is ad­vanc­ing pol­i­cy geared to­wards in­te­grat­ing mi­grant chil­dren in­to the pri­ma­ry school ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem by Sep­tem­ber.

König la­belled this “wel­come” news.

She said, “If you have to talk about refugees, in­te­gra­tion is one of the key words be­cause you can­not send them away and they are not go­ing away. They should be in­clud­ed in the na­tion­al so­ci­ety. It was very wel­comed [news] be­cause if you don’t teach the chil­dren any­thing, they maybe the next vic­tims to be­ing re­cruit­ed to un­healthy ac­tiv­i­ties, and the chil­dren are al­so the fu­ture for Trinidad.”

König said T&T could face a sim­i­lar prob­lem to that of Ger­many and ed­u­cat­ing mi­grant chil­dren can help add to a younger work­force, which in turn can pay for so­cial se­cu­ri­ty or add to the pen­sion sys­tem.

“I know it’s dif­fi­cult be­cause you have to make amends with rooms and teach­ers and we are fac­ing the same prob­lems cur­rent­ly in Ger­many, but we al­ways think that in­te­gra­tion of refugees is best for both sides,” she ex­plained.

De­spite the lan­guage bar­ri­er, König is con­fi­dent that the gap can be bridged.

She said, “It takes some time but es­pe­cial­ly if you’re talk­ing about pri­ma­ry chil­dren, they usu­al­ly get the grasp of a new lan­guage... It’s an ef­fort but in the long run I think the ben­e­fits for the so­ci­ety will be worth it.”

König has now been post­ed to Malawi, hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly served as Am­bas­sador to Nicaragua for four years be­tween 2015 and 2019 be­fore com­ing to this coun­try. She served in Nicaragua at the height of po­lit­i­cal ten­sions there in 2018. As protests rocked the coun­try amid gov­ern­ment’s at­tempt to re­form so­cial se­cu­ri­ty, Nicaragua’s au­thor­i­tar­i­an lead­ers cracked down, killing 355 peo­ple be­tween April 2018 and Ju­ly 2019.

In re­flect­ing on her time in Cen­tral Amer­i­ca, re­call­ing hav­ing friends be­come po­lit­i­cal pris­on­ers, König broke down in tears af­ter be­ing asked her thoughts on T&T. “Hav­ing a gov­ern­ment here and you can crit­i­cise it, you can have oth­er opin­ions, be proud of it,” she con­clud­ed.