Last Thursday, August 15th, Venezuela’s National Assembly approved after the second discussion the “Law on the Supervision, Regularization, Action and Financing of Non-Governmental Organizations and Non-Profit Social Organizations”, a regulation that, according to the criteria of NGO representatives and human rights defenders, puts at risk the right to freedom of association, freedom of expression, participation in public affairs and other rights established in the Constitution, national laws and international treaties.
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The lawyer and co-director of the organization ‘Acceso a la Justicia’ (Access to Justice), Alí Daniels, pointed out that among the articles of the law it stands out that NGOs must comply with a series of administrative requirements so that the government can authorize their operation.
“The law does not recognize the acquired rights of these organizations and requires that all of them register again in order to have legal standing, demanding a series of requirements that can allow an official to arbitrarily deny the said registration, and also that organizations that may be bothersome to the Government will not be legalized (…) In addition, this issue of registration does not end there. Because once you register, and assuming that all the documents are accepted, you have to submit other documents annually, so the life of the organization will depend on that annual review,” said Daniels.
The lawyer added that a third of the rules contained in the law are punitive in nature, that is, sanctioning. He specified that the document contemplates six types of sanctions: fines, cancellation of registration, preventive suspension measure, dissolution, cancellation of registration of non-domiciled organizations and expulsion from the country of foreign persons who are members of a non-domiciled organization.
“Fines are established so that for us have a confiscatory character, because for a first offense they are from 100 to 1000 dollars, the average would be 500 dollars, and if there is a second offense, the fine would be up to 10,000 dollars,” added Daniels.
According to a document published by Access to Justice on the most outstanding aspects of the legal instrument, they highlight that some of the causes of sanction established by the law are: failure to comply with the timely registration of the acts and events provided for in the law (article 35.1) and failure to comply with the obligation to notify a (received) donation or financing (article 35.2), among other reasons.
In this analysis carried out by Access to Justice, they state that the law requires all organizations to reform their articles of incorporation by imposing specific conditions and modalities (article 13 and second transitional provision).
They also indicate that another of the obligations established by the legal instrument for already established organizations is to deliver certain documents within 90 days of the law coming into force, that is, once it is published in the Official Gazette. The documents would be: an inventory of their assets with a determination of their sources and origin, accounting balances, financial statements, a list of donations with identification of donors, names of all their associates, among others (article 26).
The closure of civic space
For the human rights specialist, Beatriz Borges, the application of the Law of Supervision, Regularization, Action and Financing of Non-Governmental Organizations and Related Organizations, would have a direct impact on the closure of the social fabric and the civic space in Venezuela.
“International human rights treaties would be violated, as well as our laws and our Constitution that guarantee the right to association, freedom of expression, the right to defense and to defend rights. And the capacity of organizations to be autonomous, independent and to be able to carry out their work without violence, without coercion, without excessive regulation is being violated arbitrarily,” said Borges.
On this particular point, the co-director of Access to Justice, Ali Daniels, added that the law would violate the right to participate in public affairs. He specified that according to international standards, there are two major types of associations: rights associations and de facto associations.
“Rights associations, which are those that have legal personality, are registered in a registry. And de facto associations, which are organizations of people who are doing something, but are not registered anywhere. According to the law, only those that are registered can intervene in public affairs,” he explained.
Vulnerable sectors will be the most affected
Both specialists agreed that, with the application of this law, the most affected will be the vulnerable populations that have been impacted by the Complex Humanitarian Emergency situation that Venezuela is going through and whose needs are met by different non-governmental organizations.
“The organizations and civil society are very broad. From humanitarian organizations that help with food to organizations that work with human rights issues and defend detained, tortured, and missing people. Organizations that work with health, that defend children and adolescents, that work with animals, churches. Everyone will be affected and the entire society by this situation that violates human rights, the right to freedom of association,” said Borges, a human rights specialist.
For his part, Daniels indicated that by increasing the number of administrative requirements that they must submit annually, the cost structure of the organizations will also suffer an impact that will affect the help they can offer. “For example, if an organization is given 100 dollars for medicines for poor areas, and of those 100 dollars, one dollar was allocated for administrative expenses, now it will have to allocate more and that means that of those 100 dollars, less will reach those in need. Those most affected will be those most in need, because the humanitarian aid provided by the United Nations is aimed at these people who are the hardest hit by the Humanitarian Emergency,” stressed the co-director of Access to Justice.
Nicaragua’s formula
Daniels considered that this law opens the way to a situation similar to that of Nicaragua, where hundreds of organizations have been outlawed.
Borges agrees with this, and said that the law seeks to emulate what has happened with non-governmental organizations in that Central American country.
“In an authoritarian context like that of Nicaragua, they seek to eliminate all dissent and precisely this is the effect of the registry, although it is true that organizations are being closed de facto, because in addition there may be no response from the State and the conditions established by the law make organizations question their own existence. So, it is definitely an emulation of what has happened in Nicaragua and we see there the effects of how terrible it is to close the civic space and how this is characteristic and is a recipe of authoritarian governments,” said Borges.
On August 19th, the Under Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs of the US State Department, Brian Nichols, spoke out about this new law in Venezuela.
“The new law of Maduro and his representatives to control Venezuelan NGOs is a direct attack against civil society and freedom of association, undermines democracy and prevents citizen participation in civic spaces. “This action will only further isolate Maduro from the world community,” he wrote on his X account.