Commissioner Pizarro participated in a UN side event in favor of Venezuela

Within the framework of the United Nations Security Council, the UN Commissioner for Human Rights, Miguel Pizarro, participated in the parallel event To Help Venezuela Confront the Humanitarian Emergency amid the COVID-19 Pandemic; organized by the diplomatic missions of Germany and the Dominican Republic.

Firstly, the Commissioner thanked the missions of Germany, Dominican Republic and all the participants for their invitation and he also highlighted: “Since 2015 Venezuela is going through a Complex Humanitarian Emergency which affects more than 7 million people. This has led to more than 5 million Venezuelans to become migrants and refugees, has caused 9.3 million to live without food security and almost 60% do not have resources to buy food. In March, COVID-19 was added to all this. Today Venezuela is an emergency in the midst of an emergency.”

Likewise, Pizarro commented that events such as the meeting should serve not only to make the emergency visible, but also to make concrete proposals that would allow for the curbing of what is happening in Venezuela. Similarly, he said: “This week the last part of the cooperation with PAHO and IFRC is taking shape to attend and help protect doctors and specialists who are in the front line, but it is necessary to press for that response to be expanded, it is necessary to increase funding for the Humanitarian Response Plan and the Inter-sector Plan for COVID-19. It is necessary to pressure the regime to allow the World Food Program to access Venezuela and thus contain the food crisis.”

“The most important thing that the UN should discuss is not only the consequence, but also the cause, which is the political collapse due to the regime. What is taking place today in Venezuela should call the attention of multilateral agencies because the situation could escalate to become a problem not only for the population, but for the whole region,” said the Commissioner.

The event was moderated by Ambassador Christoph Heusgen, the German representative to the UN and current president of the Security Council; and by Ambassador José Singer, the Dominican Republic’s representative to the UN. Kathleen Page, a physician and professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the Johns Hopkins Centers; Selene Soto, a lawyer specializing in human rights, Women’s Link; and Louis Charbonneau, director of Human Rights Watch; who presented their points of view on the situation of hospitals, human rights, the defense of women’s rights and the situation of the Points of Integral Social Attention (PASI) on the border. Members of civil society and other representatives of diplomatic missions also had the right to speak.

🇺🇳🇻🇪Hace minutos participé en el evento “Ayudar a Venezuela a enfrentar la emergencia humanitaria durante la pandemia de Covid-19”, organizado en el marco del Consejo de Seguridad de ONU, por las misiones de Alemania y República Dominicana.
Abro hilo con parte de mi intervención: pic.twitter.com/fskYq15mWa

— Miguel Pizarro (@Miguel_Pizarro) July 29, 2020