Corriente Revolucionaria Bolívar y Zamora
The Venezuelan civil association Sures is dedicated to the study, promotion, education and defense of human rights, from critical, emancipatory and alternative visions. Its website says: “We intend to approach human rights in Venezuela from a balanced and considered perspective in the context of a high-intensity democracy and a society with extreme political polarization. Therefore, we avoid and question the instrumentalization, the partisan and biased use of human rights for the benefit of biases and subaltern interests.
In recent days, this organization published a document analyzing the legal assumptions on which humanitarian aid should be based and how, in the Venezuelan case, these assumptions are not being fulfilled. The document establishes a framework, within international law, to see the extent to which the issue of humanitarian aid is regulated, and informs about the regulations that frame the issue of humanitarian aid.
To find out more about the issue, Prensa de la Corriente Revolucionaria Bolívar y Zamora spoke with Lucrecia Hernández Vitar, director of Sures.
How and why does Sures address the issue of humanitarian aid?
We are monitoring the human rights situation in the country and developing research on current issues of the country’s situation. On the one hand, we are monitoring the coercive and unilateral measures against the country (the so-called economic sanctions), making an effort to systematize them within the framework of the scarce official information that is being circulated in this regard; and on the other hand, investigating the issue of human mobility, that of Venezuelan migration, trying to organize the existing information, within the context of a scarcity of figures and official data, in order to attempt to counteract some matrices of opinion that are distorting reality.
On the subject of coercive measures, we have a report that documents what measures have been taken so far, which countries have carried them out, in the framework of other procedures, whether they are legal, whether they are decrees, who issued them, and the scope of those measures. And on the issue of migration, given that the State has not taken official figures, we have made an effort to collect the figures and estimates that the United Nations, through its various agencies, has been systematizing and making public. We are trying to get closer to a real figure, to a serious estimate on this subject. In addition, we are about to publish a report on the numbers of refugees, which illustrates how Venezuela is a country that has historically received migrants rather than expelled them, irrespective of the current situation of Venezuelan migration.
And something very important: we have managed to link the beginning of this migratory escalation with the beginning and escalation of the unilateral coercive measures that are being taken against the country. We saw that migration began to rise simultaneously with the application of these coercive measures from 2014. Based on United Nations figures, we have been able to see that the coercive sanctions application curve and the migration increase curve coincide exactly.
It is within the framework of all these investigations that we come to the subject of humanitarian aid to see whether we are indeed facing a humanitarian crisis that warrants the application of humanitarian aid.
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And what is your position on humanitarian aid?
In accordance with all the resolutions produced by the United Nations on the countries where humanitarian crisis situations arose and in accordance with the assumptions made in those resolutions, in the case of Venezuela we cannot say that we are dealing with a humanitarian crisis that consequently merits humanitarian aid.
Firstly, because it is not possible to speak of a humanitarian crisis but rather of the negative impact of coercive measures on economic, social and cultural human rights. The economic crisis in the country is not the result, to a significant extent, of a lack of economic resources and means, but rather of the economic blockade resulting from all these unilateral coercive measures generically known as sanctions.
Secondly, within the framework of international law and human rights we can not claim that this humanitarian aid can be delivered for two reasons:
1) it is the constitutional state of a country that must request it before the United Nations apparatus, which in the Venezuelan case is the sole power of the president of the republic as head of state; this has not happened;
2) Resolution 46182 of 1991 and another resolution of 2006 speak of humanity, impartiality and independence as guiding principles for the application of humanitarian aid, and this is complemented by the principle of neutrality, which implies that humanitarian aid must be autonomous from political, economic and military objectives on the part of the countries aspiring to give aid, which in the Venezuelan case is ruled out, since the countries that have announced that they will give humanitarian aid are precisely the countries that have had a political position, let’s say, not very neutral on the internal political dispute over the country; for example, the countries grouped in the so-called Lima Group, which have recognized Juan Guaidó’s self-proclamation as the supposed president of Venezuela.
And there is also another very important point: humanitarian aid must be given, and historically it has been given, when there is a situation of natural disaster or armed conflict in the member countries. In Venezuela we are not facing these scenarios either. There is a situation of social and political conflict but not of armed conflict.
In fact, the director of the International Red Cross declared that he will not participate in this alleged humanitarian aid that is intended to be applied to Venezuela because the guiding principles of humanitarian aid have not been established. So we see that in the same international system, the institutions and organizations in charge of managing and executing humanitarian aid are applying a restraint to this advance with respect to Venezuela.
Therefore, for us this supposed humanitarian aid clearly violates these principles of impartiality, neutrality and self-determination of the peoples, and is configured fundamentally with political objectives in what constitutes a clear action of interference in the internal affairs of Venezuela.
So what do we call what the US, Germany and Canada are trying to do?
Our opinion is that these are acts of interference and violation of the self-determination of the Venezuelan state and people, because it is an imposition of one state on another. For example, in the case of the United States, the aid has been made possible by a law, which is an extraterritorial law from one State dictated to regulate situations of another State, which violates different principles of public international law and of human rights and of the United Nations Charter.
Germany and Canada have only declared the offer of the supposed aid, but the United States has enacted a law, called the Humanitarian Aid Law for Venezuela, dictated by the U.S. Congress. And this is framed in several actions of this type taken by the United States, such as the Public Law for the Defense of Human Rights and Civil Society in Venezuela, of 2014, which applied sanctions to the Central Bank of Venezuela and PDVSA and against any company that wants to trade with Venezuela, and other acts such as Obama’s executive order against Venezuela and then Trump’s executive orders: the sanctions against gold, against Petro, among others, which also imposed sanctions not only on U.S. companies but also on companies from all over the planet that would trade with our gold or with the Petro crypto currency.
What these measures make clear, moreover, is that as soon as the Venezuelan State designs and undertakes alternative actions to overcome the situation of economic crisis, they are attacked by these U.S. executive orders and their unilateral coercive measures.
What has the UN said about this?
In addition to what the secretary general’s spokesman has stated in recent days, in the sense of continuing to work with the Venezuelan state, the United Nations rapporteur has specifically said and has asked the United States not to continue with the application of these measures since they directly impact the economic reality of the country. The special rapporteur who visited the country in 2017 also specifically stated this. He said that in Venezuela there was no humanitarian crisis but rather an economic blockade, hoarding, speculation, among other things. In other words, two United Nations special rapporteurs dedicated to the issue of humanitarian crises have clearly stated this.
It is important to say that these rapporteurs are chosen within the United Nations system for their recognized experience in the area, and are chosen to monitor human rights situations in countries; they are thematic rapporteurs. They are the persons authorized by the United Nations to that end.
What does the Venezuelan State have to do?
We believe that it is fundamental to continue denouncing before the international community of the United Nations this interference, this violation of the principle of disguised humanitarian assistance. The other thing is to continue appealing to dialogue, to negotiation, with allied countries in order to be able to recognize this situation of illegality that has occurred last January 23 with Guaidó’s self-proclamation as president.
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In addition, it is very important that the government advance in the systematization and monitoring of the impact of the unilateral coercive economic measures that have been taken against Venezuela. In order to be able to denounce and even introduce a claim for damages for these measures before international tribunals, it is necessary to seriously quantify the damage they have caused. Some data has been made public, some isolated events, but there should be an observatory, some authority dedicated in depth to that, to monitor the economic damage being caused to the country and the population. We would be able to count on the long and excellent experience that the Cuban people and government have in this matter, for example.
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In the face of continuing pressures, such as that exerted by the United States and the Venezuelan opposition today, and continuing threats of war, what can be done?
We believe that we should continue to use denunciations as well as dialogue. We do not believe that actions that could involve the FANB are the most appropriate at this time. The way in which the Venezuelan government has been managing the conflict, seeking dialogue, is the one that they must continue to pursue.
We, as a human rights organization, believe that the option should be dialogue and peace, mediation as a way of resolving the conflict, without the use of force.
We encourage that international cooperative actions continue to deepen, to expand existing agreements and generate new ones, such as those being developed with UNICEF, WHO, among others. We are relying on international cooperation to continue addressing the issue of the economic crisis. In fact, yesterday the chancellor Jorge Arreaza met with the secretary general of the UN, Guterres in that line. That is a necessary path to continue exploring.
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Translation by Internationalist 360°
