Kristen Martinez-Gugerli is the Venezuela Program Associate at WOLA, where she conducts research, facilitates congressional outreach, and provides support for the Venezuela program. Her main areas of interest are conflict resolution and human rights for vulnerable populations. At WOLA, she actively works to advocate for humanitarian assistance to Venezuela, the development of a peaceful and democratic resolution, and the rights of Venezuelan migrants and refugees. Ms. Martinez-Gugerli graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in 2019 with a BPhil in International and Area Studies and Political Science and a certificate in Latin American Studies.
The crisis in Venezuela poses one of the biggest challenges to democracy and human rights in the hemisphere today, and the need to address the country’s complex humanitarian emergency is more urgent than ever. In this context, U.S. policymakers are examining ways to support the revival of negotiations between the Maduro government and the Venezuelan opposition in Mexico
This week, the International Criminal Court (ICC) announced that its Chief Prosecutor, Karim Khan, would embark on a ten-day visit to Colombia and Venezuela, his first visit to the region since taking office in June.
In this episode of The Venezuela Briefing, WOLA’s Kristen Martinez-Gugerli talks with Lucía Ramírez of Dejusticia and Livia Lenci of Missão Paz to discuss the response to Venezuelan migrants and refugees in Colombia and Brazil.
On Sunday, October 16, the negotiating team representing the government of Nicolás Maduro announced that it would not participate in the round of talks set to take place in Mexico City from October 17 to 20. The decision came after it was announced that Alex Saab, a Colombian-born businessman and close Maduro ally accused of money-laundering, was extradited to the United States from Cape Verde, where he had been in custody since June 2020.
Vaccination rates have steadily increased in Venezuela in recent months, with the assistance of the WHO-linked COVAX initiative and the support of multilateral institutions such as the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO) and UNICEF.
Since the government and opposition negotiating teams first sat down for a new round of dialogue in Mexico City in August—the fifth such negotiation process in six years—there has been considerable progress in establishing mechanisms to improve coordination and address urgent aspects of Venezuela’s humanitarian and political crisis.
As Venezuela’s humanitarian and economic crisis has grown deeper in recent years, the number of Venezuelan migrants and refugees abroad has surged to almost 6 million. The United Nations reports that 5.7 million Venezuelans have now fled the country, which makes up almost 20 percent of Venezuela’s population. This tragedy is the largest mass displacement in the hemisphere’s recent history.
In the latest episode of The Venezuela Briefing, hosts Geoff Ramsey and Kristen Martinez-Gugerli interview Daniel Cooper Bermúdez, a Venezuelan political scientist, human rights activist, and founder of Hearts on Venezuela, an initiative aimed at raising awareness of Venezuela’s crisis through the translation of the work of civil society organizations for an English-speaking audience.
This week, the Centro para los Defensores y la Justicia (CDJ), a Venezuelan NGO that works to defend human rights and document threats to human rights defenders in the country, published a report exposing that a total of 140 individuals and organizations working in...
On Friday, August 13, representatives of the Maduro government and the Guaidó-led opposition met in Mexico City to sign a memorandum of understanding, an initial agreement laying out the terms and objectives of a new negotiation process. This dialogue process,...
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WOLA Senior Fellow and the Charles A. and Leo M. Favrot Professor of Human Relations at Tulane University
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