U.S. Leads Latin American Countries in Invoking Rarely-Used Rio Treaty

The 74th Session of the United Nations General Assembly meets in New York. Source: State Department.

The United States and a cohort of Latin American countries voted to investigate and arrest some members of Venezuela’s socialist government who are suspected of human rights abuses, financing terrorism, drug trafficking, and other acts of corruption. 

The vote, which occurred on September 23, allows nations to cooperate on law enforcement operations and economic sanctions against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s administration. This includes freezing assets in countries where the profits from illegal activities have been hidden.

Of the 17 countries that voted, only Uruguay opposed the resolution, but Trinidad and Tobago abstained and Cuba was absent.

Countries voted in New York as signatories to the Rio Treaty, formally known as the Tratado Interamericano de Asistencia Recíproca (TIAR), or Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance. The treaty was originally signed in 1947 in Rio de Janeiro as a means of mutual defense. Twenty-one Western-Hemisphere countries in the Americas entered the pact: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, United States, Uruguay, Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Mexico. The Bahamas joined in 1982; Trinidad and Tobago joined in 1967; Mexico left in 2004; and Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, and Nicaragua left in 2012. Venezuela left in 2013 but rejoined again in July 2019 at the request of opposition leader Juan Guaidó. 

As of the September 23 vote, there were 19 member nations, many of which recognize Guaidó as the legitimate president of Venezuela.

States have only invoked the treaty 20 times since its signing, most recently after the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States. 

The morning before the vote, Julio Borges, Guaidó’s envoy to the Lima Group, met with U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet. The Lima Group is a Latin American organization that aims to resolve the Venezuelan crisis. Borges, who said that many countries have names of people linked to assets, admitted that “[i]t has been a very arduous process to get countries to adopt these sanctions.”

In support of Venezuela, Uruguayan Foreign Minister Rodolfo Nin Novoa announced that “Uruguay will withdraw from the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance because there is an obvious attempt, there is a clear intention (by the other signatories) to violate international law.” 

To Uruguay, the affirmative vote may signal the first step towards military action against Venezuela. European governments also worry that the United States may soon support military intervention from Venezuela’s regional neighbors. 

Nonetheless, Colombian Foreign Minister Carlos Holmes Trujillo assured the public that members of the Rio Pact did not discuss military intervention, such as blockading Venezuelan ships, during their meeting. Nonetheless, at this time, Rio Treaty nations have only approved sanctions and investigations. Foreign Minister Holmes has called the successful vote “a transcendental step, of great importance, in favor of peace.”