Venezuela

The Carter Center and Venezuela’s Ministry of Health, along with other partners, have stopped river blindness (onchocerciasis) in two of the country’s three transmission zones. Reaching the migratory Yanomami communities in the Amazon rainforest along the Brazilian border is the final and most challenging phase of the international effort to eliminate river blindness from Latin America.

Our Work and Methods

Providing medicine and health education in this remote, densely forested, and insecure area is a complex endeavor. Our Onchocerciasis Elimination Program for the Americas (OEPA) assists in developing and implementing creative strategies that complement the basic plan of mass drug administration two to four times per year.

Our approaches include:

• Taking supplies by boat to reach the Yanomami
• Using technology to track program progress by community
• Clearing and rehabilitating old landing strips to allow planes access to some communities that are otherwise unreachable

Impacts

River blindness transmission has stopped in two of Venezuela’s three endemic areas.

The Carter Center has sent teams to eight elections in Venezuela — in 1998, 2000, 2004, 2006, 2012, 2013, 2021, and 2024.

For some elections, we sent only small teams of election experts to study or observe parts of the processes; for others, we deployed large missions that included long- and short-term observers, in addition to experts.

President Carter himself took part in the 1998 and 2000 election missions, with Mrs. Carter joining him in 1998.

The Carter Center was the only major international nonpartisan organization to be invited to observe the most recent presidential election in 2024. After officials refused to provide transparent results, the Center’s team withdrew from the country and declared that the election did not meet international standards of electoral integrity and could not be considered democratic.

More information about all of these elections is available in our publications section.

After President Hugo Chávez’s reelection in 2000, many in the country felt his confrontational style and policies were undermining democracy. 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 Program in August 2002 to begin a formal process to help resolve Venezuela’s political crisis.

Impacts

• In May 2002, after six months of intense negotiations, the OAS and the Center helped Venezuela’s government and opposition agree on terms for a possible referendum on whether Chávez should step down.
• Both sides were called upon to respect human rights, freedom of expression, and the right to petition for recall referenda of elected officials. They signed an accord agreeing to these rights on May 29, 2003, witnessed by The Carter Center and the OAS, and the recall vote was held the following year.

In 2013, The Carter Center set out to support a healthy relationship between Latin American governments and the media, as well as to promote policies and practices to strengthen freedom of expression and democratic governance.

Our Work and Methods

The Center held a series of discussions in Venezuela and other countries across Latin America from January 2013 to November 2014 through the Contentious Issues in the Americas project.

Impacts

• The conversations enhanced compliance with the essential elements of a representative democracy and the defense and practice of human rights.
• Participants gained a better understanding of the values and principles of the American Convention on Human Rights, the Inter-American Democratic Charter, and the Declaration of Principles on Freedom of Expression of the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights.

This project ended in 2014.

After 2000, the chasm between those who supported President Hugo Chávez and those who rejected him and his political ideology was deepened by a lack of open dialogue. Instead of facilitating such dialogue, media professionals often exacerbated the divide.

Our Work and Methods

In 2008, The Carter Center initiated a project to strengthen professional journalism, providing technical support to reporters from both pro-government and opposition media outlets to reduce the confrontational and partisan tone in much of the nation’s reporting.

In 2012, the Center held a series of similar workshops on Venezuela’s electoral process ahead of the country’s Oct. 7 presidential election.

Impacts

• The project encouraged ethical, balanced, and accurate reporting. It also promoted dialogue and improved relations between media professionals from public and private organizations.
• The project provided one of the few spaces where journalists from diverse media could come together for workshops and webinars focused on topics such as the automated voting process, democratic election standards, and reading and interpreting public opinion polls.

This project ended in 2012.

The Carter Center and the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA) initiated a forum among five Andean countries —Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia — and the U.S. in 2010.

Impacts

Through frank and open dialogue, participants:

• Identified a common agenda for the six countries
• Addressed misperceptions and misunderstandings
• Proposed innovative solutions to problematic issues
• Explored the possibility of bilateral dialogues between pairs of countries with tense relations

This project ended in 2011.