It is not easy to explain to victims or their relatives how it is that a country designated for committing crimes against humanity, as is the case of Venezuela, has a seat on the UN Human Rights Council. In general, these are not easy times for multilateralism either. And it is difficult to defend a system that fails resoundingly in what it was created for, as is happening to the UN with Ukraine.
The rescue of a multilateral system that responds in a timely and effective manner to the great challenges in the field of human rights depends on the leadership in Geneva and New York, but also on a composition where the majority of its members have a firm commitment to the principles of democracy and the rule of law.
So far, two countries have been expelled from the Human Rights Council for their negative performance: first Libya in 2011 and more recently Russia. The next UN General Assembly has before it the opportunity to strengthen a composition of the Council that rescues one of the three fundamental pillars of the UN, such as human rights.
For years, Venezuela has managed to carve out a place for itself on the Human Rights Council, based on unfulfilled promises, violated commitments, and an appearance of cooperation. In this way, a precarious presence of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in the country has been manipulated for propaganda purposes, while compelling reports from the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela show the true and gloomy panorama of the country in terms of human rights, and the International Criminal Court persists in carrying out an investigation that it knows will not show progress if it depends on the questioned Venezuelan judicial system.