La ‘desconstitucionalizazión’ del Derecho Internacional de los Derechos Humanos en Venezuela

Abstract

Since the year 2000, the Constitutional Chamber of the Venezuelan Supreme Court of Justice has been setting forth a nationalist, state-centric jurisprudence, contrary to the internationalisation of rights and the constitutionalisation of human rights established in the country’s own 1999 Consititution. It has been exercising an unusual kind of control over the constitutionality of rulings handed down by the InterAmerican Court of Human Rights, with which it aims to take Venezuela out of the InterAmerican System and avoid application of international human rights law. With its unconventional and unconstitutional interpretation, the highest court of Venezuelan law is breaching the first and ultimate article of faith amongst judges, namely fidelity to the consitution. It is thus creating an artificial problem with very real and very serious consequences, making the concept of sovereignty a pre-emptive political principal that trumps out over democratic principles and the principle of protection for human rights, enabling it to ease its way out of the country’s international legal obligation established by all and towards all (omnium et erga omnes) to respect and guarantee the fundamental rights of individuals and groups of persons that find themselves under its jurisdiction.