A group of researchers and civil society organizations recently announced the launching of the website of the Monitor of the Use of Lethal Force in Venezuela (MUFLVEN), the result of an interdisciplinary effort to provide detailed information, research and analysis on the action of the State security forces with an emphasis on the deaths caused by their intervention.
This space is a gateway to the result of several years of research in a line of work spanning from 2016 to the present, which has led to Venezuela’s most comprehensive and detailed unofficial database on the use of lethal force by State security forces. A register that takes into account both civilian victims and police officers victims of homicide.
The monitoring aims at providing a comprehensive and interactive display of information, data and analysis gathered in different formats and from different publications. The newly launched website heralds an important step in this direction.
The MUFLVEN website contains a large volume of information and a search engine for date, location, type of security forces, and characterization of the victims, among other criteria. The results are shown in the form of georeferenced data on a map located below the search bar and a customized factsheet with information on each of the more than 14 thousand cases registered from 2016 to the present.
The efforts of mothers and relatives of victims of the use of lethal force, writers and lawyers who follow up on the cases allowed the researchers to tell some of the stories behind the figures to allow a complete understanding of the circumstances of each case of police violence in the most deprived communities of Venezuela.
The website also offers situation and context analysis of these phenomena, as well as theoretical-critical reflection through academic texts that provide explanation, interpretation, and context to the quantitative and qualitative data described.
In a commitment to truth and the defense of the right to life, the approach of this monitoring initiative intends to distance itself from media sensationalism, prejudices and the official narrative. The researchers combine knowledge from different disciplines –law, criminology, statistics, sociology– and lines of investigation with the aim of providing a rigorous representation of the reality of a serious phenomenon that reveals that most of the victims of the use of public lethal force are not the product of armed confrontations. The platform also found that the number of civilians killed by the intervention of the public force per every one hundred thousand inhabitants in Venezuela remains much higher than in any other country in the region.
MUFLVEN does not intend to replace official information; on the contrary, it has requested and sought access to official data that has been almost impossible to obtain. Starting from its own database -constantly updated and reviewed-, the official data that manages to get to the public eye, their analysis and indicators and the exercise of academic reflection, a tool is proposed as a source of information and consultation for researchers, students, journalists, ordinary citizens, victims and human rights activists. The platform also offers useful information and diagnoses for public policy makers in matters of citizen security, as a guarantee of human rights.
Explore the Monitor of the Use of Lethal Force in Venezuela HERE.
Translated by José Rafael Medina
