Protecting the Right to Life in Venezuela

Everyday Violence and Crime in Venezuela, 2022

Venezuelan state: a source of criminality and instability in the region, 2020

Studies have been conducted on the presidential turmoil and economic collapse that led to Venezuelan collapse. However, at the time these studies were held there was not much information available pointing out the role of the Venezuelan regime, the Armed Forces and other states abroad in this crisis. Hence, this study examines the on-going crisis in Venezuela in the context of international security, focusing on the different types of threats generated by these actors and the state. The purpose of this research is to analyze these mechanisms before they escalate into greater threats against humanity in order to highlight potential ways that might prevent them from happening in the future. The methodology of investigation in this project is a qualitative case study, thus various academic sources such as books, scholarly articles, journals, and media publications were reviewed. Finally, the study revealed that the regime that has been in power since Chávez administration have led to the destruction of Venezuelan institutionality through the generation of threats that started domestically and extended in scope to the entire region. Likewise, the study found a nexus between the state and criminal organizations from abroad, pointing out Venezuela as a regional crime hub.

Political Geography, 2020

In 2015, Caracas, Venezuela, had a homicide rate of 75 per 100,000 inhabitants, which made it one of the most violent cities in the world that year. Despite these high rates of violence, the international community knows relatively little about the dynamics underlying conflict in the city. Through a systematic comparison of three poor and working-class neighborhoods in the Caracas metropolitan area, this article analyzes the factors that have driven these remarkably high rates of violence, as well as those factors that have configured the heterogeneous violent conditions that operate across the city. Building on extensive interviews in these neighborhoods, we argue that the levels of violence in particular locales derive from the ways in which the Bolivarian political regime failed in its efforts to incorporate the poor and working-class inhabitants of different parts of the metropolitan area into the political, social, and economic systems that dominate the country today. We also argue that variation in violence results from the way in which certain neighborhoods are geographically inserted into local illicit economies and the political and social dynamics of an increasingly violent and unstable political system. In January 2019, Caracas erupted in protests after National Assembly leader Juan Guaid� o challenged Nicol� as Maduro's claim to the presidency. These rallies, as has occurred over the years, left scores dead and hundreds injured. While the international community focused on the demonstrations and the economic crisis that led millions to emigrate, relatively little attention has been paid to the problem of violence. In 2016, Venezuela's Attorney General reported that violence led nationally to 70 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, leaving 21,752 dead with police accounting for 4,667 of those killings. 1 The violence affecting Venezuela and Caracas, with 75 homicides per 100,000 in 2015, 2 is part of the wider crisis affecting the Bolivarian Revolution but also reflects Venezuela's place in a region with exceptional criminal violence. Despite global condemnation of state abuses, the dramatic violence Venezuela suffers at the hands of state forces and illicit actors is reminiscent of the violence that underlies public life in Colombia, Brazil, Mexico, Jamaica, and Central America. Simply replacing the Maduro government with a putatively liberal democratic one will not address the perilous violence Venezuelans face. This article, which focuses on three impoverished neighborhoods, argues that the violence affecting Caracas is historically grounded in these neighborhoods' geographically specific experiences and how they evolved within Venezuela's wider political system prior to and during the Bolivarian regime. 3 We emphasize the importance of urban geography in understanding crime and argue that the location of these neighborhoods connects each community to particular economic, social, and political contexts that shape the violence that occurs in those neighborhoods. These experiences of violence point to complex dynamics through which the government engages with social actors to undertake repression and sheds light on political practices in a region riven by social and criminal violence. As such, they point to lessons for scholars of a region where countries such

Letter from the President Luis Arroyo Zapatero We are living through turbulent times in which, as Mireille Delmas-Marty has recently declared in her Aux quatre vents du monde, petit guide de navigation sur l’océan de la mondalisation (Seuil 2016), we need a sort of “wind rose” to try to orient our scientific and political work, overcoming the damage inflicted by the maelströms of the appearance of global terrorism and the resurgence of the penal law of exception, the fraudulence and the impunity of the international financial crisis and its costly social and economic damage, as well as the danger of rescission of the agreements reached in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), an attempt to endow the anthropocene with a sort of world government. The economic crisis also affected the ISSD and financing for the publication of the Cahiers, but today we can present a new ordinary number, corresponding to 2016. We see its non-appearance in 2014 and 2015 as a sort of incentive to renew editorial commitments for the near future. The doctrinal part of this number is dedicated to the study of Homicide in the World and in Latin America. The embryonic development of the project commenced at the meeting of the five scientific associations and its Coordinating Committee, in Rome, in October 2014, following our audience with Pope Francis, at which he delivered a lengthy speech of the utmost importance to us. He commended the analysis of the matter to, among other societies, ISSD and ALPEC (the new Latin-American Association of Penal Law and Criminology), delivered in a keynote speech by Adolfo Ceretti Milan-Bicocca and with the coordination of regional reports from Keymer Ávila, Central University of Venezuela. Hence, the constitution of the Study Group on Homicides and Massacres (GEHOMAS), with the participation of Eloisa Quintero and Martín Barron, both from INACIPE Mexico; Juliette Trico, University of Paris X, France; Arturo Arango, Crimipol, Mexico; Matías Bailone, University of Buenos Aires, and Luigi Foffani, Modena, as well as the undersigned. It has held three successive meetings throughout 2016: May, at INACIPE, Mexico, attended by ISSD, SIC, AIDP and ALPEC; August, at the Instituto Brasileiro de Ciencias Criminais at Sao Paulo, and in December at Ciudad Real, University of Castilla La Mancha, Spain. Even in Mexico, we were fortunate to have the general report of Elías Carranza, Director of the United Nations Latin American Institute for the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of offenders (ILANUD). In turn, Víctor Moreno, chair of the University Carlos III of Madrid, who has acted for 8 years as the secretary Letter from the President Luis Arroyo Zapatero of the Conference of Ministers of Justice of Ibero-American Countries (COMJIB), presented a summary of his experience to us. Activity will continue with visits to present the results at the forthcoming United Nations Conference in 2020. A scientific society such as our own, which since its foundation in 1949 has above all been concerned with the painful and disproportionate way that prison sentences are handed down, can do no less than shudder at credible information on the epidemic of mass imprisonment, individual confinement, life-imprisonment without review, and racism and discrimination in such systems. It may be seen there where information in that respect may at least be gathered (Enmienda XIII, documentary by Ada DuVernay, 2016, Monographic num. of the Revista Brasilera de Ciencias Criminais, 129, 2017 on “encarceramento en massa” [mass imprisonment], as well as in reports from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), from “Mother Jones” and from the Brennan Center). Worse still however, it is also true that homicides committed by the police, also called extrajudicial executions, continue to be a very serious problem. In the United States of America, where only the Washington Post has been capable of establishing a permanent observatory of homicides due to police shootings (991 and 963 in 2015 and 2016). It is also very well reflected in the information from Brazil that ccompanies the judgement of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights of 16 th February, 2017, in the Favela Nova Brasilia case and the monograph of the RbrCCrim. Vol. 129). It is an outright scandal in the Philippines, where an individual reached the presidency who committed himself to order the police to shoot-to-kill, and fulfils his program with thousands of deaths in its first year, as may be seen from the press and the reports from Human Rights Watch. Above all, the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions of the United Nations maintains us carefully informed. This problematic issue is in parallel with both militarization of the police or their direct replacement by the armed forces, avoiding in both cases the control over standards of human rights in the exercise of lethal force. Close monitoring of homicides and police brutality has fallen or has been prevented in numerous countries, proof of which are the attempts in various countries –such as France– to widen the factual basis of legitimate defence applicable to law enforcement officers while on duty.

Academia Letters, 2022

is an outstanding report from the Igarape Institute. The report contains both shocking statistics and an insightful discussion of causes and solutions to homicide and violent crime in the Caribbean, Central America and South America. Statistics • Latin American countries have 8% of the world's population and account for one-third of homicides. • There were almost 160,000 homicides in Latin America in 2016; the homicide rate for all of Latin America was 21.7 per 100,000 in 2012 vs. 7 per 100,000 in the world as a whole. • The region's homicide rate has ben increasing at an average of of 3.79% annually for the past decade with an annual population growth of 1.1%. • The authors estimate that in 2020 the Latin American homicide rate will exceed 28 per 100,000. • 2.5 million people have died violently in Latin America since 2000, mostly due to homicide, almost certainly an underestimate according to the authors. • Four countries, Brazil, Columbia, Mexico and Venezuela, accounted for about a quarter of the world's homicides in recent years. • 44 of 50 cities with the highest homicide rates are in Latin America.

Research into the human security conditions that characterise the urban context of Caracas challenges common perceptions among policymakers and the general public about the main threats to the city's population. A safe and secure city is often considered to be one where the primary goal is not safety, but stability. While public authorities are unable to assure even a minimum level of public security for all inhabitants, particularly in cities divided into precarious and wealthy quarters, they reassure the population of the existence of easily identifiable threats and villains. These villains are blamed for all troubles, dangers, and threats affecting urban life. Analysing threats from a human security perspective, however, unearths other 'villains' responsible for urban insecurity: sometimes, unexpectedly, former accusers turn out to be among the main perpetrators as they do not live up to their responsibility vis-à-vis the population. This approach is not only a pragmatic response to the challenge of providing security as a shared public and private responsibility, but also a moral and philosophical evolution that is driven by, and envisions, the pursuit of positive and sustainable peace in a fair and safe society. Issues such as social inequality, hunger, lack of education or accommodation, road accidents, deficiencies in virtually all areas of public service including public transport, health care, waste removal, and protection from recurring natural disasters threaten society just as much as violence and crime -or even to a far greater extent. This insight fundamentally changes our understanding of what security -and security provision -can and should mean in a modern society.

Ciência & Saúde Coletiva, 2006

This article analyzes the changes in violence in Venezuela during the last forty years. It links the ups and downs of the oil revenues and the political crisis of the country to the changes in the homicide rates, which increased from 7 per 100 thousand inhabitants in 1970 to 12 in 1990, 19 in 1998 and 50 in 2003. The article characterizes Venezuela as a rentist society and shows its trajectory from rural violence to the beginning of urban violence, the guerilla movements of the 60s, the delinquent violence related to the abundance of oil revenues and the violence during the popular revolt and the sackings of 1989 in Caracas. After this, we analyze the coups d'état of 1992 and the influence the political violence exerted upon criminal violence. We describe the political and party changes in the country, their influence upon the stabilization of homicide rates since the mid-90s and their remarkable increase during the H. Chávez government. The article finishes with an analysis of ...

Democracy and Security in Latin America, 2021

Venezuela under Nicolás Maduro may best be classified as a failing state. This has myriad negative implications for both the country and the region. This chapter begins by defining and differentiating levels of stateness. It then evaluates Venezuelan security capacity across four different dimensions – external threats, internal threats, human security, and the rule of law and courts – to provide evidence of the state’s increasing inability to control its borders, guarantee its citizens’ safety, or even exercise a monopoly on the use of force within its territory. The third section argues that the decline in Venezuelan state security capabilities owes to the government's voluntarily abdication of security functions to non-state actors. Following this, it describes the primary threats to public security and national defense that extreme state weakness creates, focusing on the implications for domestic and regional security and the challenges this poses to re-democratization.

Cahiers de LaSur - Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), 2014

Human security has emerged as a concept that puts the security of individuals, communities and populations at the centre of security provision. Providing security involves the effective and successful prevention and mitigation of direct and structural security threats. Yet without a thorough and effective identification and assessment of threats – which vary greatly from context to context – effective and successful prevention and mitigation is not possible. The project “Operationalizing Human Security for Livelihood Protection: Analysis, Monitoring and Mitigation of Existential Threats by and for Local Communities” – in short Operationalizing Human Security (OPHUSEC) – on which this publication is based has been carried out to explore the possibility of utilizing the concept of human (individual and population centred) security for the definition, early detection and effective mitigation of context-relevant threat mitigation. This volume reflects on the findings, lessons and practical implementation experiences of this project. By doing so it hopes to encourage readers to pick up where the OPHUSEC project has left off, and use its methodology in supporting and facilitating potential security providers’ ability to assess and mitigate human insecurity within their communities. This publication brings together some of the most significant outputs and results from the OPHUSEC project, incorporated into a single cahier available as both hard copy and a freely accessible electronic version. We hope that the lessons, results and suggestions generated by this project will stimulate interest in learning more about this analytical and practically applied effort to use a human security approach in identifying and mitigating highly context-specific threats with equally context-driven and resourced response measures.

Ciência & Saúde Coletiva, 2012

Venezuela era considerado uno de los países menos violentos de América Latina, sin embargo para el año 2010 estaba entre los que mostraban la más alta tasa de homicidios. Este artículo analiza la evolución de los homicidios ocurridos en Venezuela entre 1989 y 2010 y plantea la existencia de tres etapas que se corresponden a distintos momentos de la institucionalidad social y política del país. La primera de 1985 a 1993, caracterizada por la crisis social de los saqueos de 1989 y los golpes de estado de 1992, cuando por primera vez se incrementa la tasa de homicidios de 8 a 20. La segunda fase va desde 1994 hasta 1998 que fue un periodo de recuperación de la institucionalidad y de estabilidad política cuando la tasa de homicidios se mantuvo sin variaciones alrededor de 20. Y la tercera fase que se inicía en 1999 con el gobierno de H Chávez y la destrucción institucional que ocurre con la revolución bolivariana y que provocó un incremento de la tasa de 20 a 57 homicidios por 100 mil h...