UN Panel to Scrutinize Venezuela Abuses After Maduro Addresses Human Rights Council

After Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro addresses the UN Human Rights Council next week, a high-level panel at the United Nations will examine whether the Maduro regime should be removed from the world’s top rights body on account of its gross and systematic violations of human rights.

Top Venezuelan opposition figure Maria Corina Machado will join former UN Security Council president Diego Arria, Organization of American States secretary-general Luis Almagro and international human rights lawyer Irwin Cotler on a high-level panel co-sponsored by the UN missions of Honduras, Estonia and Ukraine, together with the independent non-governmental human rights group UN Watch.

The official UN side-event (see details below) will be broadcast globally on UN Web TV on Wednesday, February 24 at 12:00 pm EST.

The event will take place just before the UNHRC’s main annual session begins an unprecedented series of three debates on the human rights record of Venezuela, which stirred controversy when it joined as a council member one year ago.

In a landmark September 2020 report, the UNHRC’s Fact-Finding Mission to Venezuela found the Maduro regime guilty of “crimes against humanity.”

As a result of conflicting resolutions by Venezuela’s allies and critics, debates on the country will be held at the UNHRC session on February 25, March 10, and 11, with briefings from UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet and the Fact-Finding Mission, as well as interventions from state delegations.

“It is morally unconscionable and logically absurd for the Maduro regime to remain a member of the UN’s highest human rights body after that body’s own investigators have presented detailed and horrifying evidence of systematic killing, torture, and sexual violence,” said UN Watch director Hillel Neuer, who will be moderating next week’s high-level panel.

The mandate of the Venezuela inquiry has been extended for an additional two years, until September 2022, pursuant to Resolution 45/20.

“Faced now with clear evidence that the orders to commit atrocities came from the very top — from Nicolás Maduro and his senior political and security officials — the United Nations must act by invoking the provision for removing council members that commit gross and systematic human rights abuses,” said Neuer.

Removing a member is contemplated in the council’s founding charter, Resolution 60/251, and has historical precedent with the General Assembly’s unanimous vote to expel Muammar Qaddafi’s Libya regime from the council in 2011.

Led by former UN Security Council President Diego Arria, and endorsed by leading Venezuela opposition figures Juan Guaido and Antonio Ledezma, UN Watch’s global campaign to expel Maduro from the council has already gathered more than 180,000 signatures.

“Regular citizens in Venezuela and around the globe are sending a message to the United Nations that it can no longer allow the Maduro regime to cast a shadow on the reputation of the world’s highest human rights body,” said Neuer.