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Published: Thursday, March 03, 2005
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Patrick J. O’Donoghue
PROVEA presents positive yet cautious view of HR in Venezuela to IAHRC
Venezuelan human rights group PROVEA has issued a communique informing the general public about the content of its report to the Organization of American States (OAS) Inter American HR Commission yesterday morning.
PROVEA says the lowering of political conflictiveness after last year’s recall referendum ratifying Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez Frias in his post had an important effect on the economy, which in turn has had favorable repercussions on some social rights indicators such as labor, health, food, housing and education.
**PROVEA Defense area coordinator, Marino Alvarado says there exists political will favorable to a series of rights on the part of the principal organs of the State. **
Alvarado highlights the strengthening of the State’s role as responsible for social rights, the drawing up of national public policies for each right, stimulating participation and organization of popular sectors of society, and the assignation of extraordinary resources through a parallel institutionality, known as the “missions.”
- On the negative side, the group points to a “structural violation of the poorer majorities,” which has not been substantially altered.
Furthermore, public policies show incoherencies in several fields, a deficit of administration and the absence or weakness of controlling mechanisms.
The report identifies several topics of concern: that the missions lose continuity, will not overcome the logic of operational emergencies, that an absence of control over performance could be facilitating administrative corruption and that social policies are being presented as gifts from the political force that controls the National Executive and not as satisfying rights that are the State’s obligation.