FROM THE FIELD: Venezuelan refugee counsellor hears ‘pain, anger and frustration’

David Marín Cabrera arrived in the Peruvian city, Cusco with his family in 2018, after fleeing Venezuela and has provided face-to-face psychological counselling, which now, due to the coronavirus pandemic, has moved online.

A Venezuelan psychologist who moved to Peru as a refugee has been telling the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, about the "pain, anger and frustration" that has been expressed by fellow displaced and local people he has counselled.

David Marín Cabrera arrived in the Peruvian city, Cusco with his family in 2018, after fleeing Venezuela and has provided face-to-face psychological counselling, which now, due to the coronavirus pandemic, has moved online.

The confinement of people in Peru to their homes as a response to the pandemic has intensified already difficult conditions for refugees and others.

UNHCR reports government figures which suggest that worldwide, there are some 4.5 million Venezuelan refugees and migrants; around 15 per cent of the South American country's total population.