Human Rights Watch calls on UN to declare "complex humanitarian emergency" in Venezuela and mobilize resources urgently

The seriousness of the situation in Venezuela requires an immediate intervention of the UN and a declaration of "complex humanitarian situation" On the part of the international organization, a technical qualification that would unlock sufficient human and material resources to cope with the daily drama of millions of Venezuelans.

The claim, described as "urgent", is contained in a detailed report prepared by Human Rights Watch (HRW) and by experts at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, which is being presented today. In the United States capital and Infobae had access to it.

The work is titled "The humanitarian emergency in Venezuela: a large-scale response from the UN is needed to address the health and food crisis". Throughout 73 pages documents the increase in maternal and infant mortality rates, the population's food deficit, worrying malnutrition rates and outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles and diphtheria , and the sharp increase in the transmission of infectious diseases, such as malaria and tuberculosis.

"The combination of these factors is explosive for the health of the population, and the most serious is that many local organizations say that they could do much more to improve the situation, but they can not do it. because of the obstacles the government imposes on them, "he said. Infobae Tamara Taraciuk Broner, Senior HRW Attorney for the Americas and one of the study leaders.

Work denounces a concealment of this reality by the Chavez regime. "During the government of Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan authorities not only did they demonstrate that they did not have the ability to end the crisis, but they exacerbated it by denying it and censoring the information about the scale and extent of the crisis. The urgency of the serious problems facing the country"he says.

That is why, he says later, decisive action by the United Nations is necessary. According to HRW, the Secretary General of the International Organization, António Guterres, is the one who "should lead efforts to define a large-scale response to address the situation inside and outside the country". outside the country ".

In addition to declaring the humanitarian emergency complex, António Guterres is expected to appoint United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator Mark Lowbad of Great Britain, who also heads the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. OCHA), "to face the Venezuelan crisis as a priority issue requiring the mobilization of the efforts and resources of humanitarian badistance".

According to HRW, the Secretary-General of the United Nations should also urge the Venezuelan authorities to "publish official data on diseases, epidemiology, food security and nutrition so that the UN can carry out a comprehensive badessment of humanitarian needs and their scale, a real crisis throughout the country ".

According to Broner Taraciuk, "these actions can be initiated without the consent of Maduro", a requirement that applies to other types of humanitarian interventions and that has hitherto hampered the efforts of the international community.

The development of the joint report of HRW and Johns Hopkins University specialists required a year of work. To badess the situation and verify the data, more than 150 people were interviewed among Venezuelan health professionals, recently arrived migrants from the other side of the border, in Colombia and Brazil, to seek care medical or food organizations, representatives of humanitarian and non-governmental organizations, United Nations officials and the governments of Brazil and Colombia.

In addition, reports on the internal situation in Venezuela provided by official sources, hospitals, national and international organizations and NGOs were recorded. "We conclude that the health system is totally collapsed "says the work of HRW, which accuses regime officials of "hiding" the true dimension of the crisis.

The result of the work, actually, is a devastating X-ray of brutal regression under the Chavez regime. The report states, for example, that the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) have reported that since June 2017, more than 6,200 cases of measles have been confirmed of which 9,300 were reported between 2008 and 2008. In 2015, only one case was recorded in 2012.

The same is true for diphtheria: since July 2016, 2,500 cases have been reported in Venezuela, of which more than 1,500 have been confirmed, while there were none between 2006 and 2015 Ditto for malaria, according to the WHO, it would have gone from 36 000 confirmed cases in 2009 to more than 414 000 in 2017. And also for tuberculosis: from 6 000 in 2014, it increased to 7 800 in 2016 and preliminary data indicate 2017, this number has exceeded 13,000.

To this is added strong growth in maternal mortality, which increased by 65% ​​in 2016 according to the latest statistics from the Ministry of Health of Venezuela. Infant mortality rose by 30% that year compared to 2015.

"Venezuela 's health care system has been in decline since 2012 and the situation has deteriorated sharply since 2017. An electricity breakdown of more than one day has affected the whole country in March and there has Other power cuts have been recurring and since then they have further reduced the possibility for public hospitals to respond adequately to the medical needs of Venezuelans, "the report said.

"Hunger, malnutrition and severe food shortages are widespread throughout the country," he said in another section.. He adds: "In 2018, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reported that between 2015 and 2017, nearly 12% of Venezuelans – 3, 7 million – were undernourished, compared to less than 5% between 2008 and 2013 ".

According to unofficial surveys, most Venezuelan households are food insecure, the work indicates. Then report that "the number of children under five suffering from moderate to severe acute malnutrition is alarming".

"From a technical point of view, Venezuela faces a complex humanitarian emergency.If the UN Secretary-General does not formally declare it, the large-scale participation of the UN, essential to remedy this, will most likely not take place. " said Paul Spiegel, director of Johns Hopkins University's Center for Humanitarian Health.