Caracas Chronicles

The Venezuelan State is once again under review this week as the United Nations’ Human Rights Committee will monitor the country’s performance on civil and political rights, based on the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

The B.R. of V.’s delegation is lead by Prosecutor General Luisa Ortega Diaz, who will be joined by the pro-government NGO Guarimba Victims’ Committee (whose spokesperson happens to be an official at the Housing Ministry).

Independent human rights groups will counterargument the State’s position, including Carlos Correa of Espacio Publico and Ligia Bolivar, who’s the coordinator of the Life Forum platform of NGOs and Director of the Human Rights Center of the Andres Bello Catholic University (CDH-UCAB).

You can follow all the details of the sessions (today and tomorrow) at the Examen ONU Venezuela’s twitter account.

But wait a sec… Didn’t the Venezuelan State already had this test recently? That’s kinda correct. But that was a very different test. Earlier this month, the Human Rights Council reviewed Venezuela’s performance in economic, social and cultural rights. If you wanna know how it went, you’re lucky as the conclusions and recommendations came out last week.

Along the thirty recommendations made by the UN-HRC, they urged the Bolivarian Republic to cooperate with human rights NGOs, open up access to public information, guarantee an independent judiciary, improve the evaluation of the social programs known as misiones and reconsider their decision of withdrawing from the American Convention on Human Rights and the Inter-American Human Rights System.

You can see all the findings for yourself by reading the full review here and download it here (but only in Spanish). Also worth reading are the personal observations from the VP of the UN-HRC’s committee in charge of the review, Mikel Mancisidor from Spain (which are also only available in Spanish).