Not all aid reaching Venezuela is humanitarian, says researcher.

From Brazil, in fact - Those unfamiliar with humanitarian aid might think that all help is welcome, no matter where it comes from. They might be surprised and interested to learn that it is perfectly regulated by rules and resolutions.

Resolution A/RES/46/182 of the 78th plenary session of the United Nations of 19 December 1991 indicates that aid is everything that includes the following conditions.

What is happening in Venezuela?

Humanitarian action (HA) is defined as the diverse set of actions to help victims of disasters (natural catastrophes, epidemics, and armed conflicts or complex emergencies) whose magnitude exceeds the response capacity of national authorities.

It involves not only providing basic goods and services for subsistence, but also, especially in conflict situations, protecting victims and their fundamental rights through human rights advocacy, testimony, claims, political pressure (lobbying), and follow-up.

The principles governing this assistance are:

• Universality: any victim of a natural or man-made disaster must be helped, regardless of any political, ethnic or other differences;

• Humanity: involves taking all possible measures to prevent or alleviate human suffering caused by conflicts or calamities;

• Independence: humanitarian organizations must perform their functions based on their own decisions;

• Neutrality: This refers to abstaining from any act that, in any conflict situation, could be interpreted as favorable to one of the parties involved or detrimental to the other;

• Impartiality: the principle by which humanitarian aid should be provided to victims based on their needs, not on any other criteria that involve discrimination based on race, sex, or political ideology.

Much more than just packages and ribbons.

Humanitarian aid is much more than distributing packages or putting up ribbons. Its aim is precisely to save lives, cure diseases, and alleviate the suffering of victims.

The people working in this area under the protection of the United Nations (Resolution A/RES/717129) are highly qualified professionals, and the organizations they work for carry out a prior situational assessment, a diagnosis that highlights the most vulnerable, women and children.

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Furthermore, they operate with best practices, transparency, and accountability, and base their actions on quality standards built through consensus over the years, the foundation of work and effort at an international level.

Mechanisms for initiating humanitarian aid come into play when a country's legitimate government understands that the situation exceeds its capabilities and requests international assistance. If there is no government, this humanitarian aid is driven by United Nations agencies with jurisdiction in this matter.

To assume international agreements.

This aid must comply with the agreements made internationally in the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness for Development, the United Nations Principles of Humanitarian Assistance, and the European Consensus on Humanitarian Assistance.

Recently, we have seen examples that seem to rely on a basis that has nothing to do with humanitarian aid. The economic, political-institutional, and socio-sanitary crisis that Venezuela is suffering has very serious effects on the population that needs assistance. It is worth noting that many organizations have already been working in the country on access to medicines and food for quite some time.

However, it is necessary to provide the Inform data, as mentioned by the Institute for the Study of Conflicts and Humanitarian Action (IECAH), in which Venezuela appears in 64th place, as a country with a medium risk of humanitarian crisis – with an index of 4,5, while Colombia has an index of 5,5, which places it at high risk.

The media has turned its attention to the Venezuelan situation, and the potential distribution of humanitarian aid is being used as a tool to generate a parallel legitimacy. In this way, international norms are contradicted, generating further division, tension, and violence among the population.

Political interference

Applying the falsehood of humanitarian aid to issues that are not, although nothing new – it has been used many times throughout history – is a very serious matter, which implies the use of the principles that govern it for the purpose of political interference.

It is extremely serious that the symbolism, nomenclature, and concepts inherent to humanitarianism are being used for other interests. It is irresponsible, and the consequences are terrible, causing the work of years by humanitarian organizations and workers to be viewed with suspicion. Those who will suffer the consequences in the short, medium, and long term will, as always, be the weakest.

Dialogue is always necessary, as is the fight for conflict prevention and the pursuit of civil, not military, peace, as outlined in the Oslo Guidelines. National and international mechanisms are perfectly suited for this purpose.

To say that one is working towards this goal while acting otherwise, hiding behind so-called humanitarian aid, sends the wrong message to the population. This is something that forms part of learning from past mistakes, and will make us reflect on actions that do not seek the well-being of a people, but rather the control of the population's resources at any cost.

We are living through an international social moment in which agreements, principles, norms, laws, and resolutions that until now were stable and represented a starting point are being broken, or appear to be fulfilled according to the interests of certain political leaders, also using humanitarian aid, something that we as a society cannot allow and should not consent to.

*Consuelo Giménez Pardo is the director of the Master's Program in Humanitarian Health Action at the University of Alcalá, in Spain.