Executive Summary
Introduction: Defending rights in a country that punishes hope
In today’s Venezuela, defending human rights is not an act of service: it is an act of survival. In a country where institutions have been turned into extensions of political power, commitment to truth, justice, or freedom can mean persecution, imprisonment, or exile. Far from being recognized as a pillar of democratic society, human rights defenders have come to be treated as enemies of the State.
The report “Defending Human Rights in Venezuela: Between Repression and Exile (2024–2025)” documents that repression is not limited to Venezuelan territory, but has been transformed into a policy of social and political control that crosses borders. In its own words, “repression in Venezuela has acquired a transnational character, affecting not only those who remain inside the country, but also those who have been forced to leave it.”
This report starts from a painful finding: the Venezuelan State has made fear a tool of government. Defenders who remain in the country live under the constant threat of being subjected to harassment, arbitrary detention, or judicial criminalization. Those who choose to leave—often in an improvised manner and without legal guarantees—do so not by choice, but out of the need to preserve life and freedom.
One section of the document expresses it clearly: “exile, inhibition, and censorship in the face of weak international protection are the only guarantee to preserve life, integrity, and the continued exercise of human rights defense work.” In those words is condensed the human drama of a generation of defenders who have had to reinvent their vocation from banishment.
Exile is not presented here as a refuge, but as a territory of uprooting, where work for human rights faces new obstacles: precariousness, invisibility, institutional abandonment, and, in many cases, the continuity of threats through digital networks or the persecution of family members who remain in Venezuela.
The document highlights that this situation constitutes a serious and sustained violation of international law. According to the IACHR (Inter-American Commission on Human Rights), “the arbitrary annulment of passports and other forms of reprisal have led women defenders and journalists to leave the country through irregular crossings, given the impossibility of a legal exit.” This mechanism, far from being an administrative irregularity, represents a policy of punishment and control that seeks to prevent international denunciation and isolate Venezuelan civil society.
Despite this bleak outlook, the report also underscores the persistence of hope. “Defending human rights in Venezuela remains, for many, a moral commitment and a form of resistance in the face of structural impunity.” The voices that rise up inside and outside the country, although fractured by persecution, continue to sustain the threads of a collective memory that refuses to disappear.
Exile, therefore, does not mark the end of activism, but its transformation. The diaspora of Venezuelan defenders has given rise to new transnational networks that connect victims, organizations, and communities in resistance. From Bogotá, Mexico City, Madrid, or Buenos Aires, alliances are woven, cases are documented, and the demands for truth and justice are kept alive.
The report describes this persistence as a “transborder civil resistance that seeks to rebuild from afar the bridges destroyed by repression.” This resistance is not only a political gesture: it is an affirmation of humanity.
Methodological note
The report on which this executive summary is based was prepared through the systematic collection of information between 2024 and 2025. It includes interviews with human rights defenders, journalists, lawyers, and activists who faced direct persecution or who were forced into exile. The interviews were conducted under confidentiality and security protocols, guaranteeing source anonymity to protect their integrity.
The analysis was complemented with reports from international bodies—among them the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, the IACHR, and the Special Rapporteurship for Freedom of Expression—as well as reports from national monitoring networks and allied organizations. The textual quotations reproduced in this document come directly from the PDDH.E Report and preserve their original wording, with slight punctuation adjustments for greater clarity.
This approach combines analytical rigor with the centrality of human experience. As the document itself notes, “the voice of the victims and of those who accompany them constitutes a form of knowledge and an indispensable tool for understanding the magnitude of the Venezuelan crisis.” From that ethical and methodological premise, this summary is structured as an exercise in truth, memory, and denunciation.
From fear to banishment: how exile is manufactured
Between 2020 and October 2025, at least 69 human rights defenders have been forced to migrate from Venezuela as a result of a progressively sustained environment of repression. This figure is an undercount of the real number, given that, because they have family members inside the country, many activists do not report their departure from the territory. This phenomenon has intensified particularly in electoral periods.
The Venezuelan exile is not a spontaneous phenomenon. It is the direct consequence of a sustained model of repression that uses fear, judicialization, and institutional violence as weapons to expel dissent. The PDDH.E Report explains it without ambiguity: “the Venezuelan State maintains a policy of social control grounded in the criminalization of protest, the surveillance of civil society, and the arbitrary use of the judicial system to punish citizen organization.”
This machinery unfolds gradually. It begins with public stigmatization: media campaigns that label NGOs as “foreign agents” or “instruments of imperialism.” It continues with institutional harassment: judicial summonses, arbitrary inspections, confiscation of equipment, and freezing of accounts. Finally, it turns into direct repression: arrests without a warrant, temporary disappearances, torture, and threats against family members.
The report describes this process as a cycle of planned terror: “The criminalization of human rights defense work has reached unprecedented levels. Defenders are subjected to surveillance, arbitrary detentions, and judicial proceedings without guarantees, which generates a generalized state of fear that inhibits civic action.”
One of the most alarming practices is the arbitrary annulment of passports. This mechanism, used by the State as a form of punishment, prevents departure from the country or blocks the return of those who are already abroad. The report identifies it as a form of transnational repression: “Since 2024, the annulment of passports has become a pattern directed at journalists, defenders, and their family members. The measure seeks to restrict mobility and access to international protection mechanisms.”
This policy does not only affect the most visible defenders. It also reaches their close ones, in a practice that the report qualifies as sippenhaft—guilt by association. “Persecution is not limited to the human rights defender: it includes their family members, friends, and collaborators, who are subjected to detentions, interrogations, or workplace reprisals.” Thus, fear extends beyond the individual, colonizing the everyday life of their environments.
The result of this framework is forced displacement. The report indicates that exile has become “the last protective measure available in the face of the nonexistence of judicial guarantees and the lack of international response.” In practice, this means that leaving the country is not a free choice, but a survival strategy.
The routes of exile are as precarious as they are predictable. Many cross through irregular paths to Colombia or Brazil; others manage to leave by air before their passports are annulled. In all cases, the moment of departure is marked by urgency. “The testimonies collected reflect that most human rights defenders left the country without prior planning, with scarce resources, and in conditions of risk.”
Fear, however, does not end at the border. As the report warns, “harassment and threats continue in exile, through digital smear campaigns and attacks on family members who remain in the country.” Repression has globalized.
Taken together, this first stage of the analysis allows us to understand exile not as a marginal consequence, but as a structural tool of Venezuelan authoritarianism. Forcing out those who document, denounce, and accompany victims is an effective way to silence dissent without resorting to mass imprisonment. It is repression disguised as voluntary flight.
Human rights defenders in exile (2020–2025)
Between 2020 and October 2025, the Venezuelan context has consolidated a forced-displacement phenomenon without precedent: the diaspora of human rights defenders, journalists, trade-unionists, lawyers, community and humanitarian activists who, in the face of increased state persecution, have been forced to leave the country as a survival strategy. This chapter documents the departure of at least 69 defenders, whose cases show a systematic, sustained, and planned pattern of repression against those who exercise the peaceful defense of fundamental rights.
The information analyzed confirms that the forced exile of defenders does not respond to voluntary decisions, but to a State policy aimed at neutralizing independent civic action. That policy combines the arbitrary use of criminal law—with charges of terrorism, treason, and conspiracy—the criminalization of social activism, family intimidation, judicial harassment, temporary enforced disappearances, and the arbitrary annulment or confiscation of passports—measures that constitute forms of political persecution prohibited by international human rights law.
a. Increase in forced exile after the 2024 electoral process
During the first half of 2024, monitoring by Human Rights of Venezuela in Movement recorded 7 cases of defenders who left the country, mostly women defenders linked to civil and political rights, freedom of expression, and accompaniment of victims of arbitrary detention. After the presidential elections of July 28, 2024, the pattern sharpened abruptly: 28 defenders migrated forcibly in the second half, spanning a diversity of agendas—LGBTIQ+ rights, anti-corruption, freedom of expression, rights of persons deprived of liberty, and humanitarian accompaniment.
The report directly links this wave of displacements to the post-electoral repression operation, documented by the IACHR, the UN Fact-Finding Mission, and OHCHR, characterized by mass detentions, raids, surveillance, and the use of the so-called Operation “Tun-Tun” as a method of psychological terror and selective persecution.
b. Emblematic cases of persecution and displacement
Among the cases documented, the report highlights the situations of Yendri Velásquez and Luis Peche, which exemplify the new forms of repression directed at social and community activists.
Yendri Velásquez, director of the Venezuelan Observatory of LGBTIQ+ Violence, was briefly detained on August 3, 2024, and his passport was confiscated and annulled. His case is part of the pattern of reprisals against defenders of sexual-diversity rights, labeled in state-aligned media as “agents of foreign agendas.” After receiving threats and constant surveillance, Velásquez had to flee through irregular crossings to Colombia, where he requested protection. His testimony, included in the report, states: “Being visible in Venezuela is enough to turn you into a target of the State; defending rights became an act of survival.”
Luis Peche, social activist and defender of labor rights in Bolívar state, faced raids and threats after denouncing irregularities in state-owned companies. In 2024 he was informally included on a list of “suspects” linked to union protest and was subjected to constant surveillance. After receiving warnings of detention, he crossed the border into Colombia in high-risk conditions. In his statement he affirms: “One does not go into exile to seek comfort, but to stay alive.”
Both cases reflect a pattern of harassment prior to exile, with surveillance, criminalization, and arbitrary cancellation of documents—a practice that the IACHR has qualified as a State-terror mechanism aimed at blocking mobility and breaking networks of advocacy abroad.
c. Venezuelan defenders’ exile: destination and vulnerability
The report identifies Colombia as the main receiving country, concentrating about 45% of the documented cases of defenders’ exile. It is followed by Mexico, Spain, Chile, Argentina, and Peru. However, even in contexts where protection programs exist, Venezuelan defenders face enormous barriers to accessing recognition and support mechanisms.
In the Colombian case, despite the existence of the Protection Program for Human Rights Defenders, most Venezuelan exiles are not incorporated due to lack of valid documentation or regular migration status. Living conditions are precarious, with difficulties in accessing employment, housing, or psychosocial care. In addition, several cases report threats or cross-border surveillance, especially in the border areas of Cúcuta, Maicao, and Arauca.
In other countries, such as Mexico and Chile, Venezuelan civil-society networks have attempted to establish informal support mechanisms, focused on psychosocial accompaniment and the rebuilding of advocacy capacities. However, the absence of regional mechanisms specific to defenders in exile leaves many in a limbo of lack of protection.
d. Structural impacts on Venezuela’s civic space
The forced displacement of defenders has generated an internal hollowing-out of capacities within the country. Many organizations have lost their principal spokespersons, coordinators, and technical teams, weakening the national capacity for documentation, litigation, and victim accompaniment.
The report warns that this phenomenon affects the continuity of projects related to justice, memory, and citizen participation, and creates a fracture in the social fabric. However, at the same time, the diaspora has driven the reconfiguration of transnational civil-society networks, which from exile have kept denunciation before international bodies alive, the visibility of victims, and the defense of truth.
The text defines this process as a “diaspora of civil courage,” where Venezuelan defenders continue their work under adverse conditions, demonstrating resilience and ethical commitment despite forced dispersion.
Recommendations
A) To the International Community
- Reinforce international protection mechanisms
The continuity and strengthening of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) is essential. Its work has been decisive in documenting crimes against humanity and establishing individual responsibilities. The international community must guarantee sustained funding, technical independence, and full access to sources, victims, and documentation, avoiding any attempt by the Venezuelan government to condition its mandate. - Restore the full presence of OHCHR in Venezuela
It is recommended that the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) re-establish in-country operations with a robust mandate and without geographic or thematic restrictions. The return of this office must ensure visits to detention centers, interviews with victims, and free monitoring of civic space. Technical cooperation should be accompanied by firm political observation. - Implement protection mechanisms for exiled defenders
It is urgent that host countries adopt regional programs of refuge and assistance specific to persecuted human rights defenders, journalists, and trade-unionists. These programs must include temporary protection, legal advice, psychosocial care, and facilities for labor insertion, recognizing exile as a direct consequence of political persecution. - Recognize forced exile as a form of persecution
The Venezuelan diaspora of human rights defenders requires a clear legal recognition. States and international bodies must recognize forced displacement for human-rights-defense reasons as a form of political persecution, guaranteeing the application of the non-refoulement principle and the inclusion of this category in asylum and refuge frameworks. - Strengthen coordination among the UN, OAS, and the International Criminal Court
It is proposed to set up a permanent table for technical cooperation and information exchange among OHCHR, the IACHR, and the ICC Office of the Prosecutor. This coordination must avoid the dispersion of efforts and consolidate a comprehensive strategy of international justice for Venezuela, focused on criminal prosecution of those responsible for crimes against humanity. - Promote targeted sanctions with a human-rights focus
Democratic States must apply individual, targeted sanctions against senior officials and commanders responsible for serious violations, without affecting the Venezuelan population as a whole. These measures must be accompanied by follow-up mechanisms and coordination with victims, to ensure they effectively contribute to accountability. - Support strategic litigation and international documentation
The international community must fund and accompany strategic-litigation efforts before international bodies, as well as initiatives for documenting and archiving violations. Technical and financial support to Venezuelan organizations is key to preserving evidence and ensuring victims’ participation in justice processes. - Protect legitimate international cooperation
All Venezuelan legislation that criminalizes international cooperation or external financing to NGOs must be rejected. Multilateral bodies and donor countries should develop alternate and safe channels of financial support, prioritizing the protection of defenders and transparency without imposing disproportionate bureaucratic hurdles. - Guarantee visibility and participation of the democratic exile
International platforms must actively include exiled defenders and diaspora civil society in their advocacy spaces, hearings, and consultations. Their experience is essential to rebuild democratic institutions and give continuity to the memory of repression and civil resistance. - Prepare an international framework for transitional justice
Multilateral bodies and allied countries must begin designing a cooperation framework for Venezuelan transitional justice, including an International Truth Commission, a victims’ reparation fund, and hybrid justice mechanisms. International accompaniment will be crucial to guarantee independence and legitimacy in the process of institutional reconstruction.
B) Recommendations for a Future Democratic Government in Venezuela
- Recognize and protect the value of human-rights defense
The new democratic government must publicly recognize the role of defenders as pillars of national reconstruction. It is recommended to institutionalize the National Day of Human Rights Defenders (December 9) and to establish educational campaigns that vindicate their historical contribution to democracy. - Repeal current repressive legislation
The State must immediately revoke the norms used to criminalize civil society, among them the NGO Oversight Law, the Anti-Hate Law, and anti-terrorism provisions applied arbitrarily. This repeal is an essential condition for restoring freedom of association, expression, and political participation. - Reform the justice system and guarantee its independence
An immediate priority is the structural reform of the judiciary and the Office of the Attorney General. Special courts with “terrorism” jurisdiction must be eliminated, and the functional independence of judges and prosecutors guaranteed. Every criminal proceeding against defenders must be reviewed and annulled for violation of due process. - Release all persons arbitrarily detained
The future government must establish a Special Commission for the Review of Political-Persecution Cases, with participation of human-rights organizations, to immediately release people unjustly imprisoned for political or conscience reasons, and to guarantee their full reparation. - Create a National Comprehensive Protection Program for Defenders
Inspired by the experiences of Mexico and Colombia, this program must include risk assessment, physical protection measures, psychosocial assistance, and legal support. Its structure must be participatory, with direct civil-society representation and a differentiated approach to gender, diversity, and territory. - Guarantee truth, justice, and full reparation
It is recommended to create a Commission for Truth and Historical Memory with a mandate to investigate serious violations and crimes against humanity. This mechanism must operate in coordination with civil society, victims, and international bodies, ensuring processes of comprehensive reparation and guarantees of non-repetition. - Restore rights and legal personality of NGOs and independent media
The democratic government must restore legality and assets confiscated from persecuted organizations and media, guarantee their operational freedom, and create incentives for strengthening the independent associative and media fabric. - Reintegrate Venezuela into the international human-rights system
The Venezuelan State must once again recognize the jurisdiction of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, comply with current precautionary measures, resume full cooperation with OHCHR, and participate actively in the UN Human Rights Council with transparent, verifiable policies. - Develop policies of symbolic reparation and guarantees of non-repetition
It is proposed to establish memorials, museums of memory, and educational programs that recognize the work of defenders, journalists, and victims of repression. The recovery of historical truth must be integrated into civic education and democratic culture. - Ensure civil society participation in institutional reconstruction
Democratic transition must be based on co-management with civic organizations. NGOs, unions, community movements, and exile networks must have an active role in drafting new laws, overseeing public policies, and defining national priorities, consolidating a model of participatory democracy.
Créditos: Este informe fue realizado por Derechos Humanos de Venezuela en Movimiento. Una denominación genérica mediante la cual, ante la total ausencia de estado de derecho, varias organizaciones nacionales de derechos humanos realizan investigaciones y se posicionan públicamente, protegiendo a sus miembros dentro de Venezuela.
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