Introduction

This chapter focuses on the migration crisis of South America triggered by different waves of people leaving Venezuela since 2015 onwards. It analyses the role-based actions and inactions of both regional organizations (ROs) and international organizations (IOs) by answering three inter-related questions posed in the introduction of this edited volume: what type of roles do both regional and multilateral institutions conceive and play in the face of a global crisis such as the migration one in South America? What are the key elements that drive the role conception and enactment (or lack of) by both ROs and IOs? Do the roles that ROs and IOs opt for and take on in response to a crisis primarily contribute to the external management of the crisis, or do they primarily lead to internal changes within the IO?

I argue that because of the crisis of regional institutions in South America due to ideological and political tensions among states and lack of institutional capacity to do so, ROs adopted mainly declaratory concerns and sporadic calls for the need to coordinate responses to the Venezuelan migratory crisis affecting most countries in South America. However, in practice South American ROs did not adopt a crisis manager role. As ROs were unable to enact a role of crisis managers due to their own crisis of regionalism in South America (South American Union [UNASUR], Common Market of the South [MERCOSUR] and Forum for the Progress and Integration of South America [PROSUR]), states adopted their own measures to tackle the migratory challenge. Unlike ROs, IOs such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and International Organization for Migration (IOM) have had a direct involvement in the migratory crisis and in fact it is through them that some level of regional coordination among states is achieved. In line with the introductory chapter of this volume, ROs, due to institutional fatigue and paralysis, and the free-riding of member states, adopted a bystander role (this also includes the Organization of American States [OAS] as an hemispheric institution), while IOs such as UNHCR and IOM adopted a stabilizer role.

A focus on South America is pertinent as most studies on the migration crisis concentrate on Central and North America.