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The blatant electoral fraud perpetrated by the government of Nicolás Maduro in light of the adverse results of the elections of July 28, plus the subsequent repression of social protest, which has already resulted in dozens of deaths, and the possibility that the Venezuelan dictatorship will get away with perpetuating itself in power against the will of the people, has once again sparked the debate on what can be done internationally to confront this type of authoritarian regimes.
BACKGROUND. This is not a new topic. In the 17th century Hugo Grotius in “De Jure Belli ac Pacis” argued the existence of a “right accorded to human society to intervene in the case of a tyrant who subjected his citizens to treatment that no one is authorized to do”.
In “The Crime of War”, Juan Bautista Alberdi anticipated at the end of the 19th century what today is known as the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P), pointing out that “when one or many individuals of a State are trampled upon in their international rights, that is, as members of the society of mankind, even if it is by the government of their country, they can, by invoking international law, ask the world to enforce it on their persons, even if it is against the government of their country”.
More recently, Pope John Paul II, in a Yugoslav Wars-context, stated that “The international community ought to show more clearly its political will not to accept aggression and territorial conquest by force, nor the aberration of ethnic cleansing. […] States no longer have a right to indifference. It seems clear that their duty is to disarm this aggressor, if all other means have proved ineffective. The principles of the sovereignty of States and of non-interference in their internal affairs - which retain all their value - cannot constitute a screen behind which torture and murder may be carried out”.
COMPLEXITY. The truth is that, except for the most serious humanitarian crises, putting an end to human rights violations in dictatorial regimes by means of an international intervention is in practice a complex issue. On top of that, there is the fact that there are many other governments in the world that have equal or worse human rights records than the Venezuelan government, such as Russia, China and North Korea.
In fact, in the 2024 edition of The Economist’s Democracy Index, out of a total of 167 countries analyzed, 59 are authoritarian regimes, that is, nearly 40% of the world's population. The index does not include micro-states and classifies only 24 as “full democracies”, 50 as “flawed democracies” and 34 as hybrid regimes.
Therefore, a first problem in confronting dictatorships is that they outnumber democracies among the 193 member states of the United Nations and this explains why two long-lived autocracies - such as China and Cuba - have been the ones that have been members of the UN Human Rights Council for the longest, as some sort of “permanent members”, obtaining comfortable votes in the General Assembly.
Another problem in dealing with dictatorships is that they perpetuate themselves in power, while democracies alternate governments which sometimes implies changes that include foreign policy objectives. In the case of dictatorships, their criminalization of press freedom, the right to protest and political pluralism allows them to control internal repression without fear of losing power. Therefore, many dictatorships deploy great amounts of resources to their international influence, since it is from abroad that they receive criticism, denunciations and pressures.
CRITICISM AND CHANGE. Certainly, human rights are not only violated in dictatorships, but the importance of focusing on them stems from the fact that in flawed democracies and in some hybrid regimes there are still possibilities for criticism, including through independent journalism and the freedom of association where, among other civil society organizations, those dedicated to the defense of human rights can operate with access to international cooperation. And of course, the right to political participation, with more than one party and elections that allow for debate and competition, is still guaranteed, even if elections do not meet the ideal of transparency and integrity.
It should also be considered that a major difference between dictatorships and flawed democracies is that most of the latter are subject to the supervision of regional and international human rights regimes. This should be a requirement for membership in the UN Human Rights Council, which would imply an amendment to its founding resolution by the General Assembly.
A further problem in confronting dictatorships is that in democracies, the governments' priority is to attend to the demands of their citizens, being accountable to public opinion, dealing with criticism, protests and strikes, responding to the press and guaranteeing the free exercise of their work, debating with opponents and competing periodically in free elections. Consequently, the priority of democratic governments is domestic issues, as reflected in the polls, and international positions are often used to mark internal differences and thus gain political advantage.
But it is precisely countries with democratic governments and high domestic standards of civil and political liberties that have the moral authority to implement an active foreign policy in defense of human rights. The latter implies intervening by denouncing the situation in non-democratic countries with State policies that criminalize the exercise of human rights and showing solidarity with their victims, applying what is now called the “principle of non-indifference”.
PRIORITIES. However, even democratic countries in many cases prioritize economic or geopolitical interests over the defense of human rights, and in most cases the "double standard" prevails. Criticizing some dictatorships and not others is one of the main problems in confronting them, forgetting that since December 10, 1948, the "national interest" of a democratic country must be the defense of human dignity. The universal character of human rights implies that they apply to all people in the world, whether they are in Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, North Korea, China and Tibet, Saudi Arabia, Equatorial Guinea, Vietnam, Iran, Belarus, etc.
Perhaps the great problem in confronting dictatorships is the failure to act preventively and thus avoid their reproduction, speaking out in time when measures that lead to the slow death of democracy become evident in a country. This has been the case in Venezuela since Hugo Chavez came to power and began to erode the rule of law, the independence of powers, the restriction of civil and political liberties -especially freedom of the press- with a discretionary and corrupt management of public funds, and the perpetuation in power ignoring the will of the people.
Similarly, it is not enough now to denounce what has happened in Venezuela without extending it to most of the countries that quickly recognized the fraudulent triumph of Nicolás Maduro, such as the dictatorships of China, Russia, Iran, Syria, Belarus, Qatar, Cuba and Nicaragua. In all these countries, the violation of popular sovereignty is institutionalized, either by their undemocratic institutional regime, such as the one-party system that outlaws political pluralism, or by totally rigged elections. To give an example, the European Union has never questioned the democratic illegitimacy of the government of Cuba, which has been in power for more than 65 years and is Venezuela's main ally.
For this very reason, as Garry Kasparov, Russian dissident and world chess champion for more than twenty years, said, “When democracies make nice with dictators, the world’s worst regimes get away with murder”.
COORDINATION. Consequently, it is time for democracies to adopt a coordinated and active foreign human rights policy, assigning it a higher priority - for example, by appointing a human rights ambassador in Latin American countries, as ten European countries are doing - and increasing the budget allocation in their respective foreign ministries. And, of course, such a policy has to be based on its general application and on maintaining high standards of domestic respect for civil and political liberties.
Confronting dictatorships and promoting international democratic solidarity with their victims, as some governments, intergovernmental bodies and foreign civil society organizations did during Argentina's last military dictatorship, is the only way to globalize human rights and thereby promote world peace. It is an objective that clearly deserves greater investment, including international cooperation in support of democratic actors in dictatorships and in exile.
But also making serious human rights situations visible, denouncing dictatorships, serves to value and strengthen fundamental freedoms in democratic countries themselves. It is a challenge for governments and also for citizens. Because, as Václav Havel said: “Without free, autonomous and self-respecting citizens, there can be no free and independent nations. Without internal peace, that is, without peace among citizens and between citizens and the State, there can be no guarantee of external peace: a State that ignores the will and rights of its citizens can offer no guarantee that it will respect the will and rights of other peoples, nations and States”.
