The Colombia-Venezuela border is a perennial powder keg, but recent events have raised the temperature to explosive levels. Fighting between the Venezuelan military and a nonstate armed group that started in March has left at least 17 people dead, dozens injured, and more than 5,000 displaced. This month, Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro announced that he would seek emergency assistance from the United Nations to diffuse landmines planted by insurgents and drug traffickers in Venezuela’s Apure region along the frontier. This follows on the heels of a request from a coalition of civil society organizations to designate a U.N. special envoy to help put an end to hostilities.
If there is a silver lining to this tragedy, it’s that Maduro’s request to the U.N. represents a rare instance of openness to international assistance, and U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres should take both Venezuela and its civil society up on their offers. Doing so would not only help resolve the immediate border crisis: It would also serve to build trust between Maduro and the U.N. in ways that could rekindle negotiations to resolve Venezuela’s broader political stalemate while igniting a much-needed process of peace building in the country.
