United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, arrived on Wednesday 19 July to Venezuela for a 3-day visit. On Thursday afternoon, the High Commissioner, human rights organizations and multiple victim groups met. In this space of one hour, 26 spokesmen were able to make requests to the High Commissioner. 20 of these interventions are registered in this document, which represents an overview of the activists’ demands for the human dignity of the country in a context characterized by the lack of democracy, increase in poverty and forced migration.

  1. The indigenous communities that live in their ancestral territories, located in remote areas of difficult access and isolated, face serious difficulties to stave off the damage and suffering caused by the systematic and prolonged infringement of their human rights, due to the loss of their capabilities to protect, adapt and recover themselves.
  2. Among the multiple humanitarian problems that these peoples face, it is worth mentioning: Epidemies (malaria, measles, difteria, whooping cough), the rise in preventable deaths and discapacities, the increase in infant-mother mortality, the economical margination due to the disruption of traditional economic flows, substituted by non-traditional exchange currencies (e.g. gold, coltan, foreign currency, etc), the dismantling of health infrastructure, including the suspension of programs of immunization, epidemiological surveillance, of control of transmissible and unattended diseases, primary care programs, indigenous health programs, and the loss of health agents in communities.
  3. The indigenous communities suffer the negative consequences of the imposition of patterns of living and consumption, foreign to their traditions: For instance, in the case of nutrition, they’ve been forced to consume food that does not nurture them properly (CLAP bags).
  4. The lack of access to fuel and lubricants has almost totally paralized fluvial transportation amongst indigenous territories, limiting free transit, preventing the continuity of ancestral and modern ways of life, impacting access to health and education and promoting involuntary isolation.
  5. Since last May, there has been no access to fuel for combustion engine based civil aviation, which has resulted in the suspension of all air-based efforts to deliver humanitarian aid, medical assistance, medical emergency air transportation, and support to the most remote communities in the states of Bolivar and Amazonas.