Venezuelan migrant women: when justice stops being a right
For more than a decade, Latin America has witnessed one of the largest human displacements in its recent history: Venezuelan migration. More than 8 million people have left the country, and in destinations such as Colombia, women, adolescents and girls make up a decisive share of that migrant population. Behind these figures sits a reality that usually goes unnoticed: the situation of Venezuelan migrant women and the enormous barriers they face in reaching justice.
Talking about access to justice is not an academic luxury or an abstract idea. It is, concretely, the real possibility of reporting an assault, demanding protection, or handling any legal procedure and getting an effective answer from the State. For thousands of women in the region that right does not exist in practice. It dissolves between irregular migration status, lack of resources, entrenched cultural prejudice, and the maze of bureaucracy.
A vulnerability that multiplies
The barriers start at the most basic level. Many migrant women do not know their rights in the countries receiving them, do not know where to turn, and run into hostile procedures. In many cases, paying for legal help is out of reach. Even when they get past those obstacles, they meet an invisible wall: deep distrust of the institutions of an unfamiliar society.
Then comes the factor that freezes everything: fear. The fear of deportation, of losing migration status, of being left unable to support a family, pushes many of them into silence, even in the face of extreme violence. In practice this turns the judicial machinery into a space that is inaccessible and, at times, threatening.
The situation reaches its most critical point when seen through gender. Migrant women are disproportionately exposed to violence, labor exploitation and human trafficking. The regional data is alarming: across the Americas, labor and sexual exploitation predominate among migrant trafficking victims, while in Colombia, for example, 74 percent of cases recorded in 2024 had sexual exploitation as their specific purpose.
The route of violence
In transit and destination countries, the risks do not begin with a report at a police station or a courthouse. They begin much earlier, on irregular routes, in informal work, and in economic dependence. Human rights organizations have warned that irregular border crossings have become dangerous traps for Venezuelan refugee and migrant women, where physical, psychological or sexual violence is a recurring feature.
In Ecuador, for instance, Amnesty International has repeatedly noted that these women face an elevated and systematic risk of multiple forms of gender-based violence. In Colombia the picture is no different: between 2018 and 2023, 147 Venezuelan migrant women were recorded as victims of sexual exploitation, a figure that points to sustained vulnerability rather than isolated incidents. Alongside this, journalistic investigations in 2026 have raised the alarm again by showing how migrant women and girls continue to be recruited by illegal armed groups and trafficking networks in border areas.
These figures confirm that the Venezuelan exodus has not only been a phenomenon of human mobility. It has been a deep protection crisis. The combination of poverty, irregular migration status, gender discrimination, and the absence of effective safeguards creates an environment of impunity in which abuses against women rarely reach a courtroom.
States that arrive late
Faced with this picture, States cannot claim ignorance. Clear obligations flow from international human rights instruments requiring them to guarantee access to justice and to a life of dignity without discrimination. Having laws is not the issue. The urgent challenge is making them work in practice.
That means, first, putting in place efficient migration regularization mechanisms that reduce these women’s vulnerability and allow them to come forward without fear of reprisal. Nobody should be forced to choose between seeking protection and risking their right to remain in the country. Irregular status cannot become a sentence of silence.
Second, governments must guarantee specialized and accessible legal assistance. Without adequate representation, access to justice is an empty promise. And when that assistance lacks a gender lens and cultural awareness, the system ends up reproducing the very inequalities it claims to fight.
It is equally essential to train officials in human rights. Institutional revictimization remains a reality at various points across the region, and eradicating it has to be an absolute priority. Opening the doors of a courthouse counts for little if what happens inside is still shaped by prejudice, distrust or indifference.
The cooperation that is needed
Finally, international cooperation is decisive, above all in the fight against human trafficking. No country can confront this transnational crime alone. The Venezuelan exodus demands coordinated responses among governments, multilateral bodies and civil society. Significant efforts are already under way, and they need strengthening urgently.
The Venezuelan migration crisis has tested the region’s institutional capacity. It has also exposed an uncomfortable truth: access to justice is not the same for everyone. As long as a woman has to stay quiet for fear of deportation, as long as trafficking and exploitation remain a trap disguised as survival, and as long as the law fails to translate into real protection, we cannot speak of a genuine rule of law.
Guaranteeing human rights should not depend on where a person was born or on their migration status. Otherwise justice stops being a right and becomes a privilege.
Rosa Virginia Cabrera Carpio — FUNDEMUL Venezuela.