The Access Initiative

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Venezuela

Region

Latin America and the Caribbean

1.56

Environmental Democracy Index Score

Venezuela scored well on the Justice and Participation pillars, and received a fair score on the Transparency pillar. While the government must make some environmental information available to the public, the law grants the government broad power to withhold information from the public on grounds of confidentiality. For the Participation pillar, the Law on Environment provides the public with opportunities to participate in environmental decision making at an early stage in the process. As for the Justice pillar, the law allows the public to challenge government decisions that violate environmental rights and provides broad standing for the public to bring environmental claims. However, there are limited assistance mechanisms in place to help women and the poor obtain redress in courts. In addition, the law fails to ensure that access to review procedures will not be prohibitively expensive.

Visit the Environmental Democracy Index to explore the EDI score.

The TAI Venezuela coalition has focused their work on advocacy based on the results of the 2005 TAI Assessment. The Assessment found that it is important to strengthen the information that will allow informed participation and to strengthen the administrative and judicial mechanisms of access to justice to help solve conflict between citizens and government. The coalition has also worked to advocate for the implementation of the principles of access.

The TAI Venezuela coalition is led by the Asociación Civil Acceso Ciudadano,  a non-governmental organization that promotes citizens’ rights to information and participation through training and guidance on issues related to education, justice, health and environment, with a focus on vulnerable groups.

Achievements Venezuela carried out its first TAI assessment in 2005. More recently, the Venezuela coalition has been actively participating in the Principle 10 process for Latin America and the Caribbean.

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