2021 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 3(1) demonstrated that closed borders are not a good mechanism to prevent crossings. Instead, these border closures are violating the principle of non-refoulement — the obligation under international law not to send people back to face human rights abuse — and creating more insecurity for persons in need of international protection. Since 2015, more than 5 million people 3 have fled Venezuela and 264,000 people have applied for asylum in Brazil. 4 The people who come to Brazil often travel to Manaus, one of the largest economic centres, which is located near the border. Manaus is one of the world’s COVID-19 hotspots and the birthplace of the Brazil variant. In April 2020, the first wave devastated the city and bodies were buried in mass graves. 5 The rate of infection was so high that Manaus was believed to be the first city in the world to reach herd immunity, but any hope that the pandemic was over was quickly quashed when the second wave collapsed the city’s health care system in January 2021. The hospitals were so inundated that they ran out of oxygen and patients had to resort to sourcing their own oxygen tanks to survive. 6 On 24 March 2021, as the World Health Organization stated that Brazil’s COVID-19 situation was affecting its neighbours, the former president of Colombia, Ernesto Samper, tweeted that ‘Bolsonaro has managed to turn Brazil into a gigantic hellhole’. 7 At this time, Brazil was leading in the number of new COVID-19 cases and deaths per day. 8 As of 20 June 2021, the country has reported almost 18 million cases of COVID-19 and over 500,000 people have died. 9 This failure to respond is a result of President Jair Bolsonaro’s continual denial of the pandemic. The President, a COVID-19 survivor himself, has called the virus 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 ‘IOM and UNHCR Welcome Donor Pledges for Venezuelan Refugees and Migrants’ IOM (News Report, 26 May 2020) <https://www.iom.int/news/iom-and-unhcr-welcome-donorpledges-venezuelan-refugees-and-migrants>. Anthony Boadle, ‘U.S. Backs Program to Settle Venezuelan Migrants in Brazil’, The National Post (online, 28 Jan 2020) <https://nationalpost.com/pmn/news-pmn/politics-news-pmn/u-sbacks-program-to-settle-venezuelan-migrants-in-brazil>. Tom Phillips and Fabiano Maisonnave, ‘“Utter disaster”: Manaus Fills Mass Graves as Covid-19 Hits the Amazo’’, The Guardian (online, 30 Apr 2020) <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/30/brazil-manaus-coronavirus-massgraves>. Júlia Ledur, ‘The Arduous Path for Oxygen to Reach the Sick in One of Brazil’s Most Remote Regions’, The Washington Post (online, 11 Feb 2020) <https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2021/world/manaus-amazonas-coronavirusmedical-oxygen-shortage/>. Tom Phillips, Uki Goni and Joe Parkin Daniels, ‘“The Heart of Darkness”: Neighbors Shun Brazil Over Covid Response’, The Guardian (online, 30 Mar 2021) <https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/mar/30/neighbors-shun-brazilcovid-response-bolsonaro>. Ernesto Londoño and Letícia Casado, ‘A Collapse Foretold: How Brazil’s COVID-19 Outbreak Overwhelmed Hospitals’, The New York Times (online, 31 May 2021) <https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/27/world/americas/virus-brazil-bolsonaro.html>. Reed Abelson, ‘Brazil’s reported one of the highest Covid death tolls in the world.’, The New York Times (online, 28 June 2021) <https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/20/health/brazil-deathscovid.html?searchResultPosition=2>. 156