Venezuela
Like many South American countries, Venezuela faces significant challenges in combating poverty despite its natural wealth. For more than a decade, The Carter Center has worked to help build a better future for millions of Venezuelans. Since 1996, The Carter Center has promoted good health by helping eradicate a debilitating disease called river blindness, and since 1998, the Center has assisted Venezuelans in developing sound democratic practices. Efforts to wage peace and fight disease continue today.
Living alongside rivers in the lush tropical rain forests, Venezuelans are surrounded by extraordinary natural beauty. However, this great beauty does not come without a cost. Many villages harbor a debilitating disease called onchocerciasis, also known as river blindness. Transmitted through the bite of a small black fly, onchocerciasis causes blindness and severe skin disease. In the Americas, more than half a million people are at risk for river blindness.
In the endemic regions of Venezuela, a total of 625 communities in three areas (Northcentral, Northeast, and South) are affected. Anyone living in these communities is at risk of contracting the onchocerciasis infection and resultant permanent loss of sight.
In the mid-1980s, Merck & Co. Inc. discovered that the drug Mectizan® (ivermectin) could be used to completely eliminate onchocerciasis with twice yearly oral doses. To help save the sight of millions of people in Latin America and Africa suffering from this disease, Merck donates as much of the drug as needed for international distribution. Since The Carter Center began its River Blindness Program in 1996, its partnership with Merck and the national ministries of health in 11 countries, including Venezuela, has enabled the delivery of more than 95 million treatments of Mectizan worldwide.
The Onchocerciasis Elimination Program for the Americas (OEPA) is a regional initiative with the goals of eliminating eye disease from river blindness and interrupting transmission of the parasite throughout the region. The OEPA strategy is to strengthen ministries of health in the six endemic countries to provide sustained mass treatment every six months with Mectizan. Mectizan distribution in Venezuela began in 2000, targeting approximately 98,500 people needing treatment twice per year.
In 2008, the Carter Center-assisted program provided more than 190,000 treatments, 94 percent of the treatment goal. These successes are promising, although significant obstacles persist to the control of river blindness in the southern area of Venezuela.
Treatment distribution is particularly difficult in southern Venezuela because the population lives in remote areas of the Amazon region that are difficult to access. In this region, treatment is below the 85 percent level considered necessary to eliminate the disease. To address this issue, a meeting of government health officials, nongovernment workers, and OEPA experts was held in Puerto Ayacucho, Venezuela, in July 2005. Since the meeting, the southern area of Venezuela achieved a record 65 percent coverage in its second round of Mectizan treatment in 2005. For the first time in 2006, health workers in the poorly accessible region were able to provide over 85 percent treatment coverage to a population of 5,069 during the first and second rounds of drug distribution. This continued in the first round of 2007.
A panel of international experts on the Carter Center's International Task Force for Disease Eradication suggested in 2001 that with continued hard work and diligence, it is feasible to completely eradicate river blindness in the Americas with twice yearly doses of Mectizan to only 85 percent of those at risk. However, the key question at that meeting was whether OEPA and the Venezuelan Ministry of Health could be successful in delivering medicines routinely and with sufficient coverage in the remote Amazon region.
The program needs additional funding to ensure the costly transport in and out of these remote regions to increase treatment coverage. National funds are particularly important in efforts to support the prompt implementation of a comprehensive health plan including onchocerciasis treatment for the Amerindian population known as the Yanomami in the bordering Amazonas. Because of their nomadic lifestyle, a special effort must be made to provide the Yanomami with the medicine they need to help preserve their sight. The international community has an important role to play in this endeavor by continuing to support Venezuela as it works to ensure all Venezuelans are protected from river blindness. Access more information about the Center's work fighting river blindness.
Since Venezuela President Hugo Chávez's election in 1998 and re-elections in 2000 and 2006, his administration has been criticized by opposition groups for what they see as its increasingly undemocratic actions. Opposition groups organized general strikes and large street protests, some of which ended in violence, to call for Chávez's resignation and early elections. From 2002 to 2004, The Carter Center and the Organization of American States worked with both sides and electoral authorities to resolve the political crisis, culminating in the first known vote on the question of recalling a president that was held on August, 2004. In 2005, the Center commissioned an analysis of Venezuela electoral laws from four international experts, in response to a request from the presidents of the National Electoral Council and the National Assembly.
In 2006, in response to an invitation from the Venezuelan National Electoral Council (CNE), The Center organized a specialized, technical mission to observe the use of automated voting technology employed in the December 2006 presidential elections and made recommendations to improve their security. In these elections, President Chávez was re-elected to a six-year term. In May 2007, the Center co-sponsored a seminar on electoral reform with Ojo Electoral, the national observer organization.
The Carter Center maintained a consultant in Caracas since 2005 to follow developments, develop reports on electoral processes and laws, and support periodic visits of invited experts and Carter Center staff.
The Carter Center's Americas Program closely monitored Venezuela's electoral process from the December 1998 election of Chávez to his re-election in July 2000 during the country's historic mega-election.
In 1998, growing concern about the economy and government corruption fueled citizens' discontent with four decades of dominance of two political parties, spawning a populist movement led by Chávez. With prospective major political change and a climate of uncertainty surrounding the elections, the National Electoral Council, or CNE, invited significant international observation for the first time since 1959, when democracy took hold.
The Carter Center's 43-person team was led by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, former Bolivia President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, former Chile President Patricio Aylwin, and former U.S. Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady. The delegation, which observed voting at 252 sites nationwide, noted the effectiveness of the country's new automated vote-count system, the first national electronic system in the world.
In its first year, the Chávez administration put forth a referendum on a new constitution, which, in December 1999, drew the support of 71 percent of voters. Every elected opposition position in the country was then presented to the voters again in 2000.
At the invitation of the National Electoral Council, The Carter Center made six missions from December 1999 to July 2000 to monitor the electoral changes and opened an office in Caracas. The Americas Program focused on questions being raised by political parties about the reliability of the election machines, which record, tally, and transmit the results to a central databank, and on concerns about the logistical readiness of the nation to hold massive elections involving 36,000 candidates for more than 6,000 positions with some 1,290 distinct ballots.
The Center organized a 48-member delegation to observe the mega-elections scheduled for May 28. The delegation was in place when Venezuelan authorities decided to postpone the elections due to technical problems three days before the election. The Carter Center said in an official statement: "We commend the Venezuelan people for recognizing the wisdom of a postponement and for working together to calmly and constructively prepare for a satisfactory process."
In June and July 2000, the Center continued its work with civil society organizations, recommending an auditing process for the electronic vote count and assessing efforts to address technical problems. When a newly appointed CNE decided to hold two elections instead of one mega-election – one election on July 31 for the national, regional, and state posts and another at a later date for municipal offices – the Center prepared another observer delegation.
On the ground before the July 31 election, Americas Program staff met with the new Consejo Nacional Electoral, the vice president of Venezuela, the candidates, the political parties, the Audit Committee, and other key players in the electoral process. President Carter; his wife, Rosalynn; former Costa Rica President Rodrigo Carazo; and former Uruguay President Luis Alberto Lacalle led a delegation of 48 people on election day.
The country had held seven elections in less than two years. The political pressure to schedule the elections early and to include all posts led to an extremely complex election in which a novice electoral council, perceived as partisan, was unable to meet the challenges in May. The July election showed some improvement, but deficiencies continued as the new CNE neglected to educate voters and poll workers in a timely manner, failed to conduct appropriate national tests and simulations that could have exposed automated machinery glitches, and continued to delay the resolution of pending appeals after the elections.
The Carter Center concluded that while the election irregularities would not have changed the 2000 presidential outcome, in which Hugo Chávez won with 60 percent of the vote, the significant politicization of the elections and organizational deficiencies contributed to a lack of confidence in the process and the nonpresidential results, thus leading the Center to characterize the July 2000 elections as flawed.
The Carter Center made several recommendations for future elections, including:
1. Earlier distribution of educational materials on the candidates, their messages, and the voting process to allow citizens to make informed choices
2. Greater maintenance and testing of the electronic vote tally machines, including national simulations, public testing, and widespread dissemination of the testing results to raise public confidence in the electoral process
3. More attention to storage and security of ballots and machines and
4. Greater training for poll workers and party poll watchers to be prepared to deal with administrative problems at polling sites.
After Chávez's re-election in 2000, many in the country felt he was undermining democracy through his confrontational style and policies. Opposition parties organized mass protests and a general strike. The government and opposition groups had become so polarized, the political crisis threatened Venezuela's stability. President Chávez was removed from office for 48 hours in April 2002 until popular protests and a change in the military's position reinstated him. At the invitation of the government and several opposition groups, The Carter Center joined the Organization of American States and the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) in August 2002 to begin a formal process to help resolve Venezuela's political crisis.
The international tripartite working group began talks in early November 2002 between the government and opposition political and civil society groups to move the country beyond the current crisis. OAS Secretary-General César Gaviria led the talks, with the advice of The Carter Center and the technical support of UNDP. President Carter had made a trip to the country in July 2002 to lay the groundwork for negotiations. Amid those negotiations in late 2002, a two-month general strike occurred, shutting down oil production and many other businesses.
To keep communications going, the Center introduced a "third side" project to identify people affected by the conflict willing to push for a peaceful resolution. Besides facilitating different levels of talks, the Center collaborated with UNDP to hold peacebuilding seminars with civic groups and the media.
After six months of intense negotiations, the OAS and the Center helped Venezuela's government and opposition agree in May 2003 on terms for a possible referendum on whether embattled President Chávez should step down. Under the country's constitution, such a vote could be held after the midway mark in Chávez's term - August 2004.
Before moving on to the steps leading to a referendum, both sides were called upon to respect human rights, freedom of expression, and the right to petition for recall referenda of elected officials. Supporters of the government and the opposition who were members of the Forum on Negotiation and Agreements signed an accord agreeing to these rights on May 29, 2003, witnessed by the Center and the OAS. Access the full text of the accord.
After the accord, the Center and the OAS were invited by the CNE to observe the entire recall effort. Along the way, the Center and the OAS worked with both sides and with the electoral authorities to get consensus on the "rules of the game" at each step of the process. After a long and contentious period of verifying signatures requesting a recall, frustration grew. The delay in announcing the number of validated signatures and the preliminary disqualification of many of the signatures led to massive protests in Caracas that turned violent in February 2004. Sufficient signatures were eventually verified in June 2004, triggering a recall vote on Aug. 15, 2004. President Chávez won almost 60 percent of the vote, so he completed the remainder of that presidential term, which ended in December 2006. Then, President Chávez was reelected to a new six-year term in December 2006, and since then has moved rapidly to deepen the Bolivarian Revolution, including proposing new changes to the constitution in July 2007.
In 2006, The Carter Center organized a specialized, technical mission to observe the use of automated voting technology employed in the December 2007 presidential election. This mission had two main goals. First, the mission wanted to demonstrate the support of the international community for democratic elections in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela; and second, the mission wanted to contribute to a larger project of The Carter Center to develop and update methodologies for observing and evaluating voting systems globally.
Since 2000, the chasm has deepened between those who support and those who reject President Hugo Chávez and his political-ideological project; the polarization is nurtured by a lack of open dialogue. Instead of facilitating such dialogue, media professionals, who have also partitioned along the lines of pro- or anti-Chavez, often exacerbate the existing divide.
The Carter Center initiated a project on Strengthening Professional Journalism in Venezuela in December 2008 to address the need for a less politicized media in the midst of Venezuela's polarized society. To reduce the confrontational and partisan tone in much of the nation's reporting, the Center provides technical support to reporters from both pro-government and opposition media outlets. The project encourages ethical, balanced and accurate reporting. It also promotes dialogue and improved relations between media professionals from public and private organizations through public seminars involving renowned international journalists and senior Venezuelan journalists and editors..
Through its workshops and public seminars, the Center trained an important group of Venezuelan journalists drawn from a wide variety of organizations, covering critical areas for the practice of the profession such as investigative journalism, techniques for media monitoring, coverage of electoral processes, journalism ethics, credible journalism and planning and production of multimedia projects. In all, more than 100 journalists attended the workshops from throughout the country.
Nov. 1, 2007: Final Report of the Technical Misson: Observing the 2006 Presidential Elections in Venezuela (PDF
1 Noviembre 2007: Misión Técnica del Centro Carter Elecciones Presidenciales de 2006 Venezuela (PDF)
Dec. 3, 2007: Carter Center Statement on Venezuela 2007 Referendum
Venezuelan citizens responded on Dec. 2 in a peaceful and orderly way to the referendum convoked by the National Electoral Council (CNE) to approve or reject the proposal to reform the National Constitution, presented to the citizens by the government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.
July 2006: A petición del Presidente del Consejo Nacional Electoral y el Presidente de la Asamblea Nacional de Venezuela, el Centro Carter comisionó a cuatro expertos en derecho electoral comparado para efectuar un estudio del conjunto de leyes que norman el sistema electoral venezolano.
Feb. 25, 2005: The Venezuela 2004 Presidential Recall Referendum: Final Reports
An overview of the Carter Center's observation of the 2004 Venezuela presidential recall referendum, with links to three final reports (in English and Spanish).
Feb. 1, 2005: Report: The Carter Center and the Peacebuilding Process in Venezuela, June 2002 - February 2005 (English and Spanish)
Comprehensive report of the Carter Center's observation of the 2004 Venezuela presidential recall referendum. (English)
El Centro Carter y el Proceso de Construccion de Paz en Venezuela, Junio 2002 - Febrero 2005 (PDF)
El Centro Carter y el Proceso de Construccion de Paz en Venezuela, Junio 2002 - Febrero 2005, Resumen (Espanol).
The Carter Center and the Peacebuilding Process in Venezuela, June 2002 - February 2005, Summary.
Informe sobre un análisis de la representatividad del segundo examen de auditoría, y la correlación entre los firmantes de la petición y el voto por el SI en el referendo de revocatoria presidencial (PDF)
El presente estudio fue llevado a cabo por el Centro Carter y lo confirmó la OEA, en respuesta a un pedido escrito que Sumate presentó al Centro el 7 de septiembre de 2004. Sumate solicitó que el Centro Carter evaluara un estudio efectuado por los profesores Ricardo Hausmann y Roberto Rigobon.
Report on an Analysis of the Representativeness of the Second Audit Sample, and the Correlation Between Petition Signers and the Yes Vote in the Aug. 15, 2004, Presidential Recall Referendum (PDF)
This study was conducted by The Carter Center and confirmed by the OAS in response to a written request from Sumate presented to The Carter Center Sept. 7, 2004. Sumate asked that The Carter Center evaluate a study performed by professors Ricardo Hausmann and Roberto Rigobon.
The Carter Center Statement About Statistical Assessment of the Venezuela Referendum Results (English and Spanish)
Upon receiving complaints from the opposition Coordinadora Democrática about suspected irregularities in the voting results recorded in the machine, specifically, a pattern of tied results among two or three machines in the same voting tables, The Carter Center consulted with several statisticians.
El Informe Final de la Auditoria del Referendum en Venezuela (PDF), Aug. 26, 2004
Auditoria de Resultados, Proceso de Referendum Revocatorio Presidencial Venezuela (Spanish version).
Audit of the Results of the Presidential Recall Referendum in Venezuela (PDF), Aug. 26, 2004
Final Report: Audit of the Results of the Presidential Recall Referendum in Venezuela, Aug. 26, 2004.
Observando Cambio Politico en Venezuela: La Constitucion Bolivariana y las Elecciones 2000, Informe Final (PDF)
El Centro Carter ha estado comprometido con observaciones electorales en Venezuela desde el año1998. Hemos conservado por lo menos un representante en el país durante este período de dos años el cual nos ha mantenido informados en forma regular, hemos enviado diez misiones de estudio y delegaciones interinas para que nos informaran sobre las preparaciones para cada elección así como sobre la solución de disputas que surgían a raíz de cada contienda electoral y hemos observado dos elecciones presidenciales
Observing Political Change in Venezuela: The Bolivarian Constitution and 2000 Elections, Final Report (PDF)
Venezuela under President Hugo Chávez undertook a bold experiment to revamp its political system and address economic inequities and poverty.
A 48-member international delegation observed the July 30 elections in 16 states and the Federal District. The Carter Center observers visited more than 270 mesas.
Pre-election Statement on Venezuela Elections, May 25, 2000
The Carter Center continues to observe the electoral process, postponed since May 25. At that time, we applauded the decision to postpone the mega-elections so that electoral authorities could have the opportunity to better prepare and inform the citizens of Venezuela about their election options and how to vote.
Pre-election Statement on Venezuela Elections, May 24, 2000
The Carter Center continues to closely monitor the preparations for the Venezuelan mega-elections scheduled for May 28.
Observation of the 1998 Venezuelan Elections, Final Report (PDF)
The Carter Center was invited to observe the December 1998 presidential election. The Special Report gives a detailed summary of the Center's activities, including the pre-election period, the legislative and regional elections, and the presidential election. The report concludes with postelection observations, recommendations, and suggestions.
Postelection Statement on Venezuela Elections, Dec. 7, 1998
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