As US aid vanishes overnight, Ecuador’s migrant communities are left stranded—caught between political posturing abroad and collapsing support at home, by Cameron Baillie.
‘Our hands are tied,’ says Katiuska Vélez Zambrano, a Venezuelan community leader in Montecristi, Ecuador. The abrupt USAID freeze in January has gutted vital services supporting Ecuador’s large migrant and refugee populations, she says, leaving them ‘paralyzed’ and ‘unprotected’.
Due to its relatively progressive migration laws and geographic position, Ecuador is home to one of the region’s largest populations of displaced people.
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