The hope that Venezuela’s neighbors will hold the country to the international norms and standards that they have all signed up to are fading, says a leading analyst.
Numerous independent human rights groups have documented the multiple ways in which the Venezuelan government has violated them, notes Christopher Sabatini, the senior director of policy at Americas Society/Council of the Americas and founder and editor-in-chief of the hemispheric policy magazine “Americas Quarterly.”
But last week that hope evaporated when a report by the Associated Press revealed that on July 23, the bloc of Latin American and Caribbean nations agreed to vote in favor of Venezuela gaining the rotating seat on the United Nations Security Council, he writes for US News and World Report:
Unfortunately, aside from the refusal of Venezuela to accept a request by U.N. rapporteurs to visit the country to investigate the human rights situation, the Maduro government has failed to meet the most basic conditions for membership including the institutional and political capacity to establish the essential national consensus to pursue security council decisions, the economic capacity to pursue and support council commitments and the political will and capacity to implement its decisions, which presumably include the protection of human rights.
These are important standards that speak to a commitment to international norms and the rule of law. Are Latin American and Caribbean states willing to testify that Venezuela meets them before they vote in this month’s U.N. General Assembly?
