U.N. fact-finders said Venezuela’s repressive apparatus remains entirely intact
Venezuelan interim President Delcy Rodríguez told the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday that her government would hold elections and thanked President Donald Trump for renewed U.S. cooperation, nearly nine months after U.S. forces captured Nicolás Maduro. “Venezuela has begun a process of democratic transformation,” Rodríguez said. She described it as an institutional process that would include judicial reform, political participation, and economic changes.
“There will be elections in Venezuela,” she said. Her government had begun talks with opposition groups to establish equal conditions for participation, she added, but “the Venezuelan people” would determine when the vote should take place. She did not identify the groups involved or give a timetable for the proposed reforms.
Rodríguez said elections should settle political differences rather than deepen them. She also promised a review of state institutions so that citizens would not feel subject to arbitrary authority.
She acknowledged that political confrontation had divided Venezuelans and disrupted the country’s relations abroad. She urged them to move beyond party loyalties and said she wanted to build a country to which people who had emigrated would choose to return.
Her pledges came a week after a U.N. fact-finding mission said Venezuela’s repressive state structures remained largely intact despite limited political changes since Maduro’s capture. Alex Neve of the U.N. Fact-Finding Mission on Venezuela told reporters in Geneva on September 17 that “the entirety of #Venezuela’s repressive apparatus … remains entirely intact” and that “Violations are occurring & absent real change, there is every reason to believe that will continue,” according to a post by the U.N. Human Rights Council Investigative Bodies on the social-media platform X.
Opposition leader María Corina Machado remained unable to return to Venezuela as of Wednesday. Her team said three attempts to travel from Panama between Monday and Tuesday failed: a boat trip was canceled, and two planned flights did not take off.
The speech also underscored her government’s shift in relations with Washington. Rodríguez thanked Trump and his administration for their willingness to restore diplomatic ties and said the two countries were working through their differences by dialogue. She identified energy, economic cooperation, security, and the fight against transnational crime as areas of common interest. She called a recent U.S.-Venezuela agreement one of the largest ever reached between the countries and said it would contribute to energy supplies in the hemisphere.
Trump had promoted an oil agreement during his General Assembly speech Tuesday. He also defended the U.S. operation that captured Maduro and said Washington would use military force, if necessary, to protect its interests in the Western Hemisphere.
Rodríguez argued that sanctions had hindered Venezuela’s development. She urged countries to avoid energy policies that, in her view, could raise costs and disrupt food production and employment. She also called for wider access to artificial intelligence and warned against a growing digital divide.
Turning to the June 24 earthquakes, Rodríguez thanked the countries and U.N. agencies that assisted Venezuela. “A nation is not reborn merely by rebuilding buildings,” she said. “It is reborn when it rebuilds trust in its institutions.”
She also reaffirmed Venezuela’s claim to the Essequibo region, administered by Guyana, and called for renewed bilateral negotiations.
Other leaders mentioned Venezuela during the week’s debate. Paraguayan President Santiago Peña, who spoke earlier Wednesday, said his recent visit to Caracas and the opening of dialogue with Venezuelan authorities did not signal approval of their government. “I did not go to Venezuela to validate a regime,” he said, calling instead for a democratic transition and Venezuela’s eventual reintegration into Mercosur.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said Tuesday that Venezuelans deserved to determine their own future without outside interference. Trump, speaking the same day, praised cooperation with Venezuela’s current leaders while defending the operation that removed Maduro.