CIVICUS Monitor downgrades Venezuela's civic space to ‘closed’ after years of repression
December 6, 2023The CIVICUS Monitor announced in a new report Wednesday that it has downgraded Venezuela’s civic space to ‘closed,’ its worst rating. The downgrade culminates a sustained assault on civil and political rights in the South American nation that began over a decade ago and continues today.
The report, People Power Under Attack 2023, details civic space conditions in 198 countries and territories. The findings for Venezuela show there is little space left for people to exercise their fundamental freedoms, and authorities try to stifle citizens' voices and attempts at activism in an atmosphere of hostility.
In 2023, there were hundreds of documented attacks on human rights defenders in the country. Lawmakers drafted more regulations on civil society on top of restrictive laws that already make it nearly impossible for organisations to operate independently. And though hundreds of newspapers and radio stations have been forced to close, self-censored or moved abroad, the remaining few faced additional intimidation.
“This rating change is a result of the decades-long onslaught on civic space," said Rafael Uzcátegui, Coordinator of the Venezuelan Education-Action Program on Human Rights or PROVEA. "The situation is bleak, as Venezuelan authorities have completely closed the space for civil society to operate."
The CIVICUS Monitor rates each country's civic space conditions based on data collected throughout the year from country-focused civil society activists, regionally-based research teams, international human rights indices and the Monitor's own in-house experts. The data from these four separate sources are then combined to assign each country a rating as either ‘open,’ ‘narrowed,’ ‘obstructed,’ ‘repressed’ or ‘closed.’
Venezuela’s score puts it among 28 countries in the worst category: ‘closed.’ Globally, this year’s report finds that nearly a third of humanity, or 30.6% of the world’s population, now lives in ‘closed’ societies, the most restrictive possible environments. This is the highest percentage of people in ‘closed’ countries CIVICUS Monitor has recorded since its first report in 2018.
Meanwhile, just 2.1% of people live in ‘open’ countries, where civic space is both free and protected, the lowest percentage yet and almost half the rate of six years ago. Together, these statistics point to a world in crisis.
“We are witnessing an unprecedented global crackdown on civic space,” said CIVICUS Monitor lead researcher Ms. Barreto . “World leaders and civil society activists desperately need to work together to prevent more countries from closing their civic space as Venezuela has done.”
In Venezuela this year, researchers documented censorship, authorities’ refusal to register organisations, introduction of restrictive laws and intimidation.
There were dozens of violations of free expression, from threats against a reporter’s family to arrests of citizens who spoke out to investigations of journalists under an anti-hate law. The police even launched investigations into citizens editing Wikipedia pages. At least five radio stations stopped broadcasting, a sign of how few remain compared to the 81 forced to close last year.
Thanks to laws giving government influence over most aspects of civil society organising, almost 55% of registered groups reported obstacles for routine administrative changes. Authorities simply closed some groups, such as when the Supreme Court of Justice ordered the intervention of the National Committee of the Venezuelan Red Cross and seized its assets.
"The Venezuelan government views critical voices as the ultimate threat to their power. They use every tactic to ensure civil society and media can barely operate and sustain itself,” said Ángela Rodríguez, Researcher at the Latin American and Caribbean Network for Democracy (REDLAD). “The result is a situation where activists feel constantly under threat."
Venezuelan authorities continue to tighten their grip. The National Assembly approved a draft “NGO Law” and adopted the International Cooperation Bill, which would allow even more restrictions on the country’s last civil society organisations.
“Venezuelan human rights defenders and independent journalists face relentless harassment and persecution,” said Marysabel Rodríguez, Observatory Coordinator of national organisation Espacio Público. “But there are activists and critical voices who remain in the country despite the repression. We need solidarity in the face of the powerful who want to make this crisis invisible.”
The other downgraded countries this year are Bangladesh (closed), Bosnia & Herzegovina (obstructed), Germany (narrowed), Kyrgyzstan (repressed), Senegal (repressed) and Sri Lanka (repressed).
For more information or to arrange an interview, please contact: media@civicus.org