The International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor’s Office must decide in the next few days if the Preliminary Exam that is currently being performed on our country, which analyzes the possibility of the commission of crimes against humanity in Venezuela as of 2014, gives way to a concrete investigation or if it’ll be dismissed. The Prosecutor General Fatou Bensouda announced towards the end of 2020 that she would make a decision about this before culminating her term in office. Karim Khan, who has been selected as the new ICC Prosecutor General will assume office towards the end of June.
If the ICC opens a formal investigation on Venezuela, it would be a historic event. The courage of the victims would be vindicated, who, in spite of all the obstacles and threats, would have the possibility of obtaining justice through the international protection mechanisms.
This Prosecutor’s Office at The Hague has received information of denouncements of political persecutions, extrajudicial executions, tortures, forced disappearances, and sexual abuses. The ICC criminally investigates individual responsibilities, unlike other entities that elucidate state responsibility. In this stage, should it occur, the victims’ role will still be a key factor.
In the context of the current crisis in Venezuela, human rights organizations maintain a continuous effort to record and document the systematic violations of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of the population in order to accompany the victims and give visibility to these violations before the national and international community.
In this sense, the Crisis in Venezuela bulletin emerges as a weekly space in which, as a human rights movement, we bring together the situations that currently reflect the humanitarian crisis that Venezuela is going through.
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