Severe shortages of medicines, medical supplies, and food have intensified since 2014, and weak government responses have undermined Venezuelans’ rights to health and food.
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Official statistics show that infant and maternal mortality rates in 2016 were substantially higher than in previous years. The infant mortality rate for the first five months of 2016 was 18.61 deaths per 1,000—45 percent higher than the 2013 figure.
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The maternal mortality rate for the first five months of 2016 was 130.70 deaths for every 100,000 births, 79 percent higher than the rate reported for 2009, the most recent year for which such data is available.
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For more than a decade, the government has expanded and abused its powers to regulate media and has worked aggressively to reduce the number of dissenting media outlets. Existing laws grant the government power to suspend or revoke concessions to private media if “convenient for the interests of the nation,” allow for arbitrary suspension of websites for the vaguely defined offense of “incitement,” and criminalize expression of “disrespect” for high government officials. While some newspapers, websites, and radio stations criticize the government, fear of reprisals has made self-censorship a serious problem.
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The Venezuelan Observatory of Prisons, a human rights group, reported that 6,663 people died in prisons between 1999 and 2015. As of July, average overcrowding of 210 percent plagued Venezuelan prisons, according to the Observatory.
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