Liberal International continues to urgently call on the United Nations Human Rights Council to address Venezuela’s persistent, serious violations of human rights. In this written statement LI focuses attention to the necessary renewal of a mandate for the independent international fact-finding mission on the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela to continue monitoring and investigating the grave human rights violations on the ground. LI calls on the Venezuelan authorities, the UN, and the broader international community to act with urgency and resolve to uphold human rights, defend democratic freedoms, and hold those responsible for violations to account.

See the full statement below

Liberal International submits this statement as the Council approaches the expiry of the mandate of the independent international fact-finding mission on the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. We do so in the conviction that the record before the Council admits of only one conclusion: the Mission must be renewed and renewed with the means to do its work.

In its most recent report, covering the period between the presidential election of 28 July 2024 and 31 August 2025, the Mission concluded that serious human rights violations and international crimes were committed and that the State policy of silencing, discouraging and stifling opposition continues to be systematically implemented, adapting its methods to moments of heightened political tension. It confirmed that arbitrary detentions, torture and sexual violence, taken as a whole, constitute the crime against humanity of persecution on political grounds, and that this crime continued to be committed against real or perceived political opponents.

The scale is a matter of record. The authorities themselves acknowledged detaining more than 2,220 people, among whom the Mission recorded at least 218 children and adolescents. Between January and August 2025, the Mission documented a further 200 detentions, investigating 44 in depth and finding reasonable grounds to believe that everyone was arbitrary. In 26 investigated cases it found incommunicado detention lasting weeks or months, and in 15 of those, more than six months treatment that international standards proscribe as torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. Terrorism courts convened collective hearings, one involving 103 defendants, held remotely over messaging platforms, sometimes at night, on the basis of fabricated files and pre-established charges, with defendants unable to see, hear or question the officials before them. In all but one investigated case, the accused were prevented from appointing lawyers of their own choosing.

The consequences have been fatal. The Mission confirmed that 25 people were killed during the post-election protests, and in the fourteen deaths it examined most closely it found State security forces involved in six, with several indications pointing the same way in six more. It investigated five deaths in State custody, concluding that officials aware of detainees’ deteriorating condition failed to act with due diligence to prevent them, and that the authorities have not conducted impartial, thorough and transparent investigations. It established twelve cases of enforced disappearance and found that habeas corpus has been deprived of its effectiveness as a remedy, having gone unaccepted or unprocessed in at least 28 cases, with deliberate obstruction by justice officials contributing to the violation.

We draw the Council’s attention with particular gravity to the Mission’s findings on sexual and gender-based violence. It documented 22 cases across six states committed by State officials in coercive environments, including coercive transactional sex imposed on at least one woman and five adolescents aged between fifteen and seventeen; forced nudity; electric shocks applied to the genitals; and reproductive violence, including the case of a breastfeeding mother whose guards demanded sexual favours in exchange for allowing her to feed her infant.

Civic space has meanwhile been closed by legislation. The Mission identified the non-governmental organizations law in force since November 2024 as a mechanism of political control through mandatory registration, disproportionate sanctions and broadly discretionary powers, and warned that the “Simón Bolívar” law, with penalties reaching thirty years’ imprisonment, could become a tool to persecute organizations that cooperate with international bodies, including this Council. It documented eighteen arrests of journalists in the course of their work, eleven of whom remained in detention.

In December 2025 the Mission found that officials of the Bolivarian National Guard have committed serious violations and crimes against humanity for more than a decade. In its March 2026 oral update, it documented 135 alleged arbitrary detentions between September and December 2025 alone, a third of them of family members of the primary targets, including eight children and adolescents among them children aged two and five, and recorded at least three further deaths in custody. Foro Penal counted 902 political prisoners at the close of 2025, and the National College of Journalists 21 imprisoned journalists. Venezuela scores 13 out of 100 in Freedom in the World, with zero of forty points for political rights.

Finally, we ask the Council to weigh a matter within its own control. The Mission’s investigation was seriously hampered by the liquidity crisis affecting the Secretariat: of eleven assigned posts it filled eight, only three of which were occupied for the full investigative period, and it had at times a single investigator and a gender adviser serving three months in a temporary capacity. A mandate starved of resources is a mandate quietly narrowed. The Mission has made at least 145 recommendations to the State since 2020; not only has the State failed to comply, but it has also intensified the repression. That is precisely why the mechanism must survive.

Recommendations

Liberal International respectfully submits the following recommendations.

To the Venezuelan authorities:

1. Release all persons arbitrarily detained on political grounds, and lift the precautionary measures imposed on those released, including prohibitions on speaking publicly about their cases.
2. End incommunicado detention, prolonged solitary confinement and the use of punishment cells; close all clandestine places of detention; and grant independent monitors access to all detention facilities.
3. Investigate, impartially and transparently, every death in State custody and every death arising from the post-election protests, disclose the results to the families concerned, and hold those responsible to account.
4. Restore the effectiveness of habeas corpus, guarantee the right of detainees to counsel of their own choosing, and end the practice of collective and remote hearings that deny the accused any meaningful participation.
5. Investigate all reported sexual and gender-based violence in places of deprivation of liberty, including cases raised by adolescent complainants whose allegations the courts declined to receive.
6. Repeal or substantially amend the laws restricting civil society and expression, refrain from adopting the pending legislation on “fascism” and cease all reprisals against persons and organizations that cooperate with United Nations mechanisms.
7. Cooperate with the Fact-Finding Mission and grant it access to the country and restore the full capacity and presence of the Office of the High Commissioner in Caracas.

To the Human Rights Council and its Member States:

8. Renew the mandate of the independent international fact-finding mission and ensure that the posts the Council allocates to it are in fact funded and filled, so that the mandate is not narrowed by attrition. In light of the forthcoming reports of the Fact-Finding Mission and the High Commissioner, to be presented in September, the Council should take into account their findings and continued documentation of the situation, which further underscore the need for the renewal of the Mission’s mandate.
9. Support accountability at the international level, including through the International Criminal Court and the exercise of universal jurisdiction, and as the Mission has specifically urged take accountability measures in their own jurisdictions where their nationals have been among the victims.
10. Provide protection and resources to Venezuelan human rights organizations, including those forced to relocate abroad, and to victims and their families both inside and outside the country.
11. Press for consular access to and the release of detained foreign nationals, noting the Mission’s finding that nationals of 29 States have been affected and that communications from thirteen States went unanswered.