Can Supranational Institutions Protect Democracy?: Insights from Venezuela’s Authoritarian Turn
By Daniela Fonseca ’27.5
The United Nations (UN) emerged from the ashes of a failed League of Nations and two world wars, with the ambition of preventing another global conflict and fostering stronger cooperation among countries. Currently, this ambition includes maintaining international peace, protecting human rights, and promoting democratic values worldwide, and the creation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 2030 Agenda. Yet, despite decades of institutional evolution, democratic erosion and authoritarian consolidation persist. The Venezuelan case illustrates a fundamental tension between the UN’s normative commitments and its practical capacity to enforce them. From human rights violations, to dictatorship and beyond, the Venezuelan Case showed a variety of conflicts where the UN could have intervened to defend the Venezuelan people's rights. Accordingly, while the United Nations plays a crucial role in documenting abuses and promoting democratic norms, its effectiveness in safeguarding democracy remains constrained by the principles of state sovereignty, inadequate enforcement mechanisms, and political alliances that enable authoritarian regimes to resist accountability. This dynamic raises a fundamental question: to what extent can the UN interfere in preventing human right abuses if it were to cross the state sovereignty principle while fulfilling its purpose to keep peace?
Background
As the United Nations has repeatedly emphasized, “a culture of democracy is fundamentally a culture of peace.” (1) This idea has underpinned the organization’s expanding role since the end of World War II and the Cold War, from election monitoring, organization, verification, and technical assistance to active peacekeeping operations. (2, 3) More recently, the creation of the Sustainable Development Goals proposed a shared goal towards the betterment of humanity, encouraging global participation in reducing inequality and promoting peace. Specific to democracy, the SDG 16 aspires to “promoting peaceful and inclusive societies, providing access to justice for all and building effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.” (4) As the 2030 deadline approaches, progress towards the SDGs has been delayed. This delay can in part be attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic and various other conflicts that have arisen, but the overarching reason remains that the effectiveness of these goals depends heavily on the cooperation of member states. Founded on the principle of state sovereignty–which establishes that all member states are sovereignly equal, must settle disputes peacefully, and shall not use force against another state's territorial integrity or political independence (5)–the UN lacks the authority to impose democratic reforms without consent. Such a lack of authority creates a structural limitation, as states that violate democratic norms can simply refuse to comply with UN recommendations, further weakening the organization’s ability to accomplish its broad mandate and sabotaging compliance with the SDGs.
The Latin American case brings challenging dynamics to achieving democracy and defending human rights. The Organization of the American States (OAS) is a multilateral organization that has contributed to the undergoing work towards the SDG 16. Venezuela is named by the OAS as one of the biggest challenges, alongside Nicaragua, to fight corruption. (6) Moreover, recent U.S. involvement in Venezuela has raised questions on international law violation, democracy protection, and human rights defense.
The UN’s approach on the principle of state sovereignty could unintentionally reinforce authoritarian governments, under what scholars describe as authoritarian enabling. (7) This reinforcement reveals a central contradiction within the UN system: efforts intended to stabilize governance can, in tandem, perpetuate non-democratic ruling. The organization’s dependence on state cooperation, combined with its lack of enforcement capacity, shapes the boundaries of what it can realistically achieve in promoting and preserving democracy.
Case Study: Venezuela
The UN’s 2024 International Mission documented "gross human rights violations" in Venezuela, including “arbitrary detentions, enforced disappearances, torture, extrajudicial killings, and violations of the rights to freedom of opinion, expression, peaceful assembly and association.” (8) Although these findings provide evidence of systematic repression and demonstrate the UN’s willingness to expose authoritarian practices, the mission ultimately fulfills a purely investigative role rather than an enforcement function as a supranational role. Despite international scrutiny and clear evidence of democratic deterioration, the Venezuelan government intensified its repressive practices–including arrests of opposition members–after the 2024 election (9), which was later proven as fraudulent (10).
Research on international clientelism by Carvalho, Thales, and Dawisson Belém Lopez demonstrates how states can exchange economic benefits for diplomatic support, creating stable patterns of protection within international institutions (11). This happened under Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro mandate, where they used Venezuela’s oil wealth to build a “clientelistic network” of Latin American and Caribbean allies through institutions like PetroCaribe. Through economic exchange, Chavez and Maduro created bonds that secured favorable representation within international institutions through long term links and consistent political support. (12) Venezuela's success in securing election to the UN Human Rights Council in 2019, despite widespread international condemnation of its human rights record, shows how these alliances function within international institutions, acting as a functional cover for crimes against humanity.
In practice, the UN becomes a venue where regimes can secure protection through strategic relationships, allowing authoritarian practices to persist despite clear international documentation of abuses for decades. This dynamic hinders the organization's credibility: if the UN's role in defending humanity is to mean anything beyond documentation, it must extend to active monitoring, fair representation, and enforcement of the very rights and democratic institutions enshrined in SDG 16.
During a 2026 briefing to the UN Human Rights Council, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, acknowledged that “Venezuelans continue to face significant challenges in accessing healthcare, water and sanitation services, and food.” (13) Türk additionally expressed concerns on constant human rights abuses and stated that “the country’s future must be decided by its people (14).” In the aftermath of the U.S. invasion, the UN's role in preserving democracy should be central to Venezuela's reconstruction. The organization has concrete tools to support this process — from electoral monitoring and institutional capacity building to humanitarian coordination and human rights enforcement. Preventing a repetition of democratic breakdown requires that the UN move beyond documentation and deploy these mechanisms to ensure a fair governmental transition, economic stability, and lasting human rights defense.
Conclusion
The Venezuelan case illustrates the extent to which the United Nations faces inherent structural constraints. Deriving its authority from the very states it seeks to regulate, the organization creates a fundamental tension between its normative commitments and operational capacity. The creation of the SDG’s, especially SDG 16, does not guarantee their application.
Clear documentation of systematic human rights violations and democratic breakdown has failed to produce meaningful supranational entity intervention. The Venezuelan regime’s strategic cultivation of international allies through clientelistic networks has provided protection within UN forums, allowing authoritarian practices to persist and intensify despite international awareness and condemnation. The UN’s reliance on member state cooperation creates opportunities for strategic regimes to manipulate the system, using the organization's own principles against its democratic objectives. After the U.S. invasion, it is therefore of utmost importance to determine how diplomacy, human rights defense, and protection of democracy will take shape under the lens of the UN. The actions taken from now on will set a precedent for other countries undergoing similar democratic restrictions and abuses. The UN has struggled to prevent authoritarianism in Venezuela, and its long-term effectiveness in facilitating systematic defense of democracy remains uncertain.
Endnotes
(1) Boutros-Ghali, Boutros. An Agenda for Democratization. New York: United Nations, 1996.
(2) Joyner, Christopher C. “The United Nations and Democracy.” Global Governance 5, no. 3 (1999): 333–357. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27800236.
(3) United Nations. “Our History.” United Nations Peacekeeping. Accessed April 7, 2026. https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/our-history.
(4) United Nations. “Goal 16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions.” Accessed April 7, 2026. https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/peace-justice/.
(5) United Nations. "Chapter I: Article 2(1)–(5)." Charter of the United Nations. Repertory of Practice of United Nations Organs. Codification Division Publications. https://legal.un.org/repertory/art2.shtml.
(6) Consuegra, Luis J. Democracy and Peacebuilding in the Framework of SDG 16+: Policy Recommendations from an Interregional and Multistakeholder Approach. Stockholm: International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, 2020. https://doi.org/10.31752/idea.2020.8.
(7) Von Billerbeck, Sarah B.K. United Nations Peacekeeping and the Politics of Authoritarianism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2025.
(8) United Nations “UN International Mission Reveals Gross Human Rights Violations in Venezuela.” October 2024. https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/10/un-international-mission-reveals-gross-human-rights-violations-venezuela.
(9) Human Rights Watch. "World Report 2025: Venezuela." Human Rights Watch, 2025. https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2025/country-chapters/venezuela.
(10) Serrano Santos, Andrea. "Venezuela's 2024 Election Crisis: Unveiling Electoral Fraud, Repression, and the Erosion of Civil Liberties." Human Rights Research, October 2, 2024. https://www.humanrightsresearch.org/post/venezuela-s-2024-election-crisis-unveiling-electoral-fraud-repression-and-the-erosion-of-civil-li.
(11, 12) Carvalho, Thales, and Dawisson Belém Lopes. “International Clientelistic Networks: The Case of Venezuela at the United Nations General Assembly, 1999–2015.” Latin American Politics and Society 64, no. 3 (2022): 1–25.
(13, 14) United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. “High Commissioner Türk Updates Council on Venezuela: The Country’s Future Must Be Decided by Its People.” March 2026. https://www.ohchr.org/en/statements-and-speeches/2026/03/high-commissioner-turk-updates-council-venezuela-countrys-future.
