Head of the Unit­ed Na­tions High Com­mis­sion­er for Refugees (UN­HCR) of­fice in Trinidad Miri­am Aertk­er said she hopes Trinidad and To­ba­go will set up its own asy­lum sys­tem and le­gal frame­work to deal with refugees/asy­lum seek­ers in the coun­try.

Speak­ing with the Guardian Me­dia on Wednes­day evening at the pre­miere of a doc­u­men­tary ‘Start­ing Over’ at the Cin­e­maONE Imax at One Wood­brook Place in Port-of-Spain, Aertk­er said the UN­HCR has al­so been in talks with the Gov­ern­ment re­gard­ing the de­ten­tion and de­por­ta­tion of mi­grants.

Aertk­er said there are cur­rent­ly about 36,000 mi­grants reg­is­tered with the UN­HCR. She ex­plained that 85 per cent are Venezue­lans, fol­lowed by six per cent Cubans and then oth­er na­tion­al­i­ties in­clud­ing Caribbean coun­tries, Latin Amer­i­can and African coun­tries.

She added that out of that num­ber, “on­ly about 3,400 are recog­nised as refugees.”

Asked about the re­cent de­ten­tions of Venezue­lan na­tion­als at the He­li­port in Ch­aguara­mas and if it has come to the at­ten­tion of the UN­HCR, Aertk­er said “yes”. She added the UN­HCR is hav­ing “on­go­ing di­a­logue with the T&T Gov­ern­ment.”

“The UN­HCR is here to sup­port refugees and asy­lum seek­ers in the coun­try. We have al­ways had a sup­port­ing role, an ad­vi­so­ry role, and a guid­ance role, when­ev­er we are need­ed in a coun­try. So in T&T, we work of course with dif­fer­ent line min­istries. We work with tech­ni­cal high-lev­el min­istry fo­cal points in or­der to sup­port when­ev­er we can,” Aertk­er said.

How­ev­er, she said the time has come for this coun­try to have spe­cif­ic leg­is­la­tion to deal with the in­flux of mi­grants - refugees and asy­lum seek­ers to this coun­try.

“One of the hopes that we have is that T&T will set up its own asy­lum sys­tem and le­gal frame­work. We see that it is very, very im­por­tant so that all these is­sues can be ad­dressed - what are the rights, what are the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of refugees and asy­lum seek­ers and with the le­gal frame­work and an asy­lum sys­tem oth­er pro­ce­dures will be put in place. Dif­fer­ent min­istries will take their roles and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties from so­cial to health to ed­u­ca­tion,” Aertk­er said.

Not­ing the T&T Gov­ern­ment’s in­ten­tion to in­clude Venezue­lan mi­grant chil­dren in schools, an ini­tia­tive which is yet to be im­ple­ment­ed, Aertk­er said that de­ci­sion is wel­comed by the UN­HCR.

“We re­al­ly wel­come the de­ci­sion by the gov­ern­ment on the in­clu­sion in­to the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem of refugees and mi­grants. We hope that this hap­pens soon so that we see chil­dren learn­ing to­geth­er from all dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties and see that in­te­gra­tion hap­pen­ing on that side be­cause many many chil­dren right now are still out of school,” Aertk­er said.

On­ly this week, Venezue­lan ac­tivist Sofia Figueroa-Leon called on the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly to give a sta­tus up­date on when the chil­dren of Venezue­lan mi­grants will be able to at­tend schools in T&T.

In an im­me­di­ate re­sponse, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly told Guardian Me­dia that “The MOE is await­ing the fi­nal­i­sa­tion of the reg­u­la­tions by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al.”

In Sep­tem­ber, Gads­by-Dol­ly an­nounced that when the 2023/2024 aca­d­e­m­ic year be­gan over 100 chil­dren of reg­is­tered Venezue­lan mi­grants would be ad­mit­ted in­to pub­lic schools. How­ev­er, to date, this is yet to hap­pen.