Women-led organisations responding across the nexus in the Venezuela crisis

The complex humanitarian emergency in Venezuela since 2015 has disproportionately affected women and girls, exacerbating existing inequalities and exposing vulnerable women and girls to increased risks of violence due to economic hardship, food insecurity, absence of rule of law, educational disruption and lack of access to healthcare. The crisis has expanded the roles and responsibilities of women – requiring them to develop solutions to feed their families in the face of hyperinflation and a collapsed health system – and of adolescent girls, who are often required to take on the roles of adults and caretakers in the absence of their mothers. The crisis has further exacerbated gender-based violence (GBV), including domestic violence, sexual assault and trafficking, as economic stress, social instability, and breakdowns in law enforcement have contributed to heightened levels of violence against women and girls. Furthermore, the lack of access to support services, such as shelters and counselling, leaves survivors without essential resources for safety and recovery.

The complex context in Venezuela

Addressing these challenges requires comprehensive humanitarian interventions that prioritise the specific needs and rights of women and girls, including access to essential services, protection from violence, economic opportunities, and opportunities for education and empowerment. However, the Maduro government has ignored offers of international cooperation and humanitarian aid, instead criminalising these efforts, despite the demands of the people affected. Underfunding of the humanitarian response in is a significant concern, and ongoing restrictions on international cooperation and aid continues to weaken the response, while the impacts of the humanitarian emergency on the Venezuelan population grow more severe. The restriction of humanitarian aid has raised significant human rights concerns, particularly regarding access to essential services such as food, medicine and healthcare. The Venezuelan population has suffered from shortages of basic necessities, leading to widespread hardship on key populations suffering from deprivations that damage or put at risk their lives, integrity, security, freedoms and human dignity, while humanitarian aid has been used as a political tool to maintain power and control the distribution of resources. Of 20.2 million people with humanitarian and protection needs, 14.2 million have critical needs in different areas of their lives, with different degrees of severity, with a total of 4.2 million people reaching severe needs thresholds. Inoperative health services and a lack of resources impede women’s access to healthcare while women choose to prioritise food expenses for their household over the cost of medication for themselves.

Eight out of 10 women consider the amount of food they bring home as deficient, scarce or very scarce, according to research by Centro de Justicia y Paz (Center for Justice and Peace or CEPAZ), a Venezuelan women-led organisation (WLO) working in the humanitarian and human rights sectors. This finding is despite the fact that 6 out of 10 women reported spending almost the entire family budget on food, with 76% saying that at least one person in their family is malnourished. Women employ various strategies to acquire food, including buying on credit, borrowing food or money, reducing portion sizes, reducing the number of meals per day, or reducing expenses on health, education, or other items. Alongside the strains of managing household feeding and the needs of family members, women are victims of family violence, with psychological violence being the most prevalent type, followed by physical, symbolic, economic, and sexual violence. Only 31% of the women who reported being victims of violence reported or denounced the incidents, with fear of reprisals and distrust of institutions being the main reasons for not reporting.

Early patterns of men’s migration out of Venezuela led to both shifts in, and the exacerbation of, traditional gender roles for Venezuelan women. Women heads of household are now the majority, with responsibility for young children and other dependents as both primary caregivers and primary providers. The shift in gender roles within Venezuelan families has increased the decision-making and leadership of women in their households, but has also led to increased care burdens and workloads which deepens reliance on negative coping strategies including transactional sex and exposure to violence, increasing the vulnerability of women and their dependents.

Bureaucratic impediments to humanitarian assistance

Venezuela requires civil society groups to abide by a wide array of regulations through as many as 40 laws. In May 2024, a second reading of the draft Law on Supervision, Regularization, Performance and Financing of Non-Profit Social Organizations, which would strip all non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and civil associations of their legal status and force them to reapply from scratch in a new registry, was held by the government-controlled legislature. The bill would allow the state greater control over organised civil society through a series of complex requirements including handling lists of members, donors and assets.

The proposed law is similar to an existing Nicaraguan law that has led to the elimination of thousands of NGOs, including the Nicaraguan Red Cross and charitable Catholic congregations. Many NGOs, especially civil society organisations (CSOs) including WLOs, would not be able to fulfil the new requirements, forcing them to close. The National Assembly is also considering another bill that would create an agency to regulate ‘international cooperation’ and a fund to hold all international donations. The bill includes a new system of sanctions specifically aimed at national civil society in Venezuela, with the power to ‘prohibit, suspend, restrict or definitively eliminate’ any association that, under the discretion of the Executive, is considered to promote or participate directly or indirectly in activities contrary to the interests of the government, and establishes evaluations that determine the application of these sanctions.

The Law for the Defense of the Political Sovereignty, Self-determination, and Territorial Integrity of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela includes the possibility of annulling the obligations and commitments of the state in agreements with international cooperation organisations in case the latter fail to suit the purposes of the bill. Under a new system of authorisation, a ‘compulsory registration integrated system’, the government would manage recognition of associations as possible recipients or participants in activities of international cooperation, giving the agency discretion over which NGO activities would receive funding and denying millions of people in need of humanitarian assistance access to the support offered by the international community.

The bill would make the government solely responsible for receiving, transferring and exchanging human resources, goods, services, funding and technology from NGOs, and make use of them following the priorities and discretionary criteria of the National Executive Branch, through the creation of a fund under its administration that would raise, lend and manage the resources coming from or dedicated to international cooperation. This would be catastrophic for Venezuelan civil society and international agencies providing humanitarian assistance to seven million people in need, and would likely reduce the humanitarian funding provided by international donors to Venezuela due to the incompatibility with good humanitarian donorship and humanitarian principles more broadly.

The essential work of WLOs

Despite onerous restrictions on CSOs in Venezuela, women-led organisations are key agents of change within Venezuelan civil society and increasingly shaping humanitarian response within displaced and migrant communities. The breakdown of democratic institutions, enforcement of restrictive laws that severely limit the operation of CSOs, and threats against human rights defenders and CSOs have led to thousands of CSO staff and activists leaving Venezuela over the past decade. This has necessitated the reformation and adaptation of networks and mechanisms to enable WLOs to continue working and supporting vulnerable women and girls within Venezuela and the wider region. WLOs operating in exile are at the forefront of advocacy efforts for peace, reconciliation and social justice in Venezuela, sharing learning, training and strategies in real time.

Only 300,000 women and girls have been targeted for humanitarian assistance by United Nations partners over the course of 2024, out of an estimated 4.1 million in need. WLOs play a pivotal role in providing essential services to Venezuelan women and girls in need of international protection: holding knowledge from local contexts, centring women’s experiences and perspectives, and challenging traditional power structures to push for gender-responsive policies and programmes. Inside Venezuela, WLOs are on the frontlines, delivering critical humanitarian assistance to vulnerable communities: from distributing food aid and medical supplies to providing psychosocial support, legal assistance and support for survivors of gender-based violence. WLOs often combine humanitarian action and human rights protection, working across the humanitarian–development–peace nexus to do vital work advocating for the human rights of vulnerable women and girls and contributing to social and political transformation through standing for electoral office and engaging in civic participation. WLOs foster solidarity and resilience among community members, strengthening social cohesion and collective action. By creating safe spaces for dialogue, mutual support and collaboration, WLOs build networks of solidarity and promote grassroots initiatives for community-led mutual aid.

Cross-border mass displacement has left millions of women and girls without access to basic services and protection. The perilous migration routes encountered by individuals fleeing Venezuela expose hundreds of thousands of women and girls to heightened risks of exploitation, trafficking and violence. Venezuelan migrant and refugee-led WLOs and WLOs led by women from neighbouring countries work to amplify the voices of women and girls affected by the crisis, advocating for their rights and needs in the planning and execution of humanitarian strategies and programmes. The severity of GBV risks faced by refugee and migrant women and girls – including femicide – in Central America and Mexico is compounded by the presence of transnational organised criminal groups along main transit routes, which pose further security and operational challenges to international GBV service providers. Lack of documentation leads to fear of deportation and retaliation among GBV survivors if they report violence and exploitation to agencies cooperating with government entities.

Within the regional crisis response, 22 out of 86 current GBV sector partners are refugee- and migrant-led organisations providing community-based services in GBV prevention and response, in addition to programmes empowering women and girls to become agents of change in their communities. Skills training, education programmes and income-generating activities are especially important to counter barriers to formal livelihoods in host countries and develop alternatives to transactional sex. By promoting women’s leadership and participation in decision-making spaces throughout the response cycle, WLOs foster a culture of empowerment and accountability that supports women and girls to build positive coping strategies through adaptive problem-solving and resilience building that reduce their vulnerability to violence.

Conclusion

Venezuelan WLOs working in-country, in the region, and in exile are contributing to humanitarian response alongside their work promoting dialogue, reconciliation and respect for human rights through peacebuilding and conflict-resolution initiatives. CEPAZ engages at a global level with human rights instruments to highlight the need to implement the Women, Peace and Security agenda in the Venezuela context due to the characteristics of the crisis. By advocating for an inclusive and gender-sensitive approach to peacebuilding that recognises the unique perspectives and contributions of women in building sustainable peace in Venezuela, WLOs are working to address the root causes of conflict and violence. Through their humanitarian programming, WLOs are addressing the differential impact of the complex humanitarian emergency on women and girls in Venezuela, and working to promote gender equality and the realisation of women’s rights. The contribution of WLOs working across humanitarian and human rights response has enhanced the prevention and mitigation of protection risks, and allowed humanitarian actors to better respond to the urgent protection needs of women and girls in Venezuela and the wider region. However, the large scale of unmet needs continues to grow, while the July 2024 Venezuela presidential election grows closer. WLOs are calling for increased preparedness planning by humanitarian actors in the region, in anticipation of increased population flows out of Venezuela creating a surge in pressure on monitoring and services. What is needed now is for fellow humanitarian actors to follow the lead of WLOs and to improve coordination and cooperation to better support the rights and needs of Venezuelan people together.

Beatriz Borges is the Director of Centro de Justicia y Paz (the Center for Justice and Peace).