WASHINGTON—U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) spoke on Thursday at a U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing assessing U.S. policy towards Venezuela with Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Brian Nichols and USAID’s Assistant Administrator of the Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean Marcela Escobari.

Murphy highlighted the consequences of the Trump administration’s disastrous Venezuela policy: “It’s really hard to overhype what a disaster President Trump’s Venezuela policy was — this decision to push all of our chips into the middle of the table all at once, recognize Guaidó and try to facilitate a coup, made us look ham-handed and in the end feckless. Recognizing someone as the leader of a country who is not actually the leader of the country, it doesn’t actually make us look strong, it makes us look weak.

“And we are stuck inheriting a policy that did not work, that has in part contributed to a humanitarian disaster that now brings thousands and thousands of Venezuelans to our border seeking salvation. And so I support strategic engagement with a purpose, and that purpose has to be an election that draws the participation of all political groups, and gives Venezuelans the chance to exercise their right to determine the future of the country,” Murphy added.

Murphy discussed the impact of U.S. sanctions on Venezuela’s humanitarian crisis: “[T]here’s no doubt the humanitarian disaster in Venezuela is first, second, and third a consequence of the regime’s unconscionable policies. But I think we should be honest that our sanctions contribute to the humanitarian nightmare, and we can argue that there are good reasons for our sanctions. But what worries me is a [Government Accountability Office] report from last year that suggests we actually don’t have real good information about how and if our sanctions are contributing to the humanitarian crisis inside Venezuela. The report found that Treasury and its interagency partners are limited in their ability to develop further actions to ensure that U.S. sanctions don’t disrupt humanitarian assistance.”

You can read Murphy’s full exchange with Nichols and Escobari:

MURPHY: “Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to both of our witnesses for being here today. I was in both Mexico and Columbia over the August recess in part to take a look at our Venezuela policy. It’s really hard to overhype what a disaster President Trump’s Venezuela policy was — this decision to push all of our chips into the middle of the table all at once, recognize Guaidó and try to facilitate a coup, made us look ham-handed and in the end feckless.

“Recognizing someone as the leader of a country who is not actually the leader of the country, it doesn’t actually make us look strong, it makes us look weak. And we are stuck inheriting a policy that did not work, that has in part contributed to a humanitarian disaster that now brings thousands and thousands of Venezuelans to our border seeking salvation. And so I support strategic engagement with a purpose, and that purpose has to be an election that draws the participation of all political groups, and gives Venezuelans the chance to exercise their right to determine the future of the country.

“And, so I’ve heard Assistant Secretary Nichols, you suggest that there's a possibility of being able to get to an election in 2024. But what does a free and fair election look like in Venezuela? What are our benchmarks to know whether this is an election that we can support, and that the Venezuelan people actually have a chance at exercising their free will?

“Listen, I understand it's not going look like an election in our country, right? And I don’t know that we should hold it to that standard, but we have to have some pretty clear baselines. What are we looking for as we try to get towards a viable election?”

NICHOLS: “Thank you senator. The European Union’s electoral observation mission, I think has provided the most comprehensive roadmap, along with the Carter Center, to what that would look like. And it involves things like inequality of access, an equality of access, to the media, rules that ensure that electoral authorities cannot disqualify candidates arbitrarily, access to areas to campaign, and a cessation of the abuses by security forces of opposition candidates, transparency in the preparations technically for the election, and the conducting of the election.

“It means allowing the opposition to carry out a primary process. As we’ve seen, when they have unified candidates, they will beat the regime candidates even when everything else is tilted against them. A key part of the discussions between the unitary platform and the regime will be the implementation of this process and we support that.”

MURPHY: “Ms. Escobari, there’s no doubt the humanitarian disaster in Venezuela is first, second, and third a consequence of the regime’s unconscionable policies. But I think we should be honest that our sanctions contribute to the humanitarian nightmare, and we can argue that there are good reasons for our sanctions.

“But what worries me is a [Government Accountability Office] report from last year that suggests we actually don’t have real good information about how and if our sanctions are contributing to the humanitarian crisis inside Venezuela. The report found that Treasury and its interagency partners are limited in their ability to develop further actions to ensure that U.S. sanctions don’t disrupt humanitarian assistance. Are you familiar with this report? And if so, how is USAID engaged with our implementing partners to mitigate these challenges? And how do we make sure that we have visibility inside Venezuela to understand what the actual impact of our sanctions are?”

ESCOBARI: “As you said, you know, it's very hard to separate the secondary effect. It is also very clear that the deterioration of the economy preceded the sanctions, and that we have this capacity to work on humanitarian aid and the government also has the capacity to have invested in many of the services that are now not functioning in Venezuela.

“A lot of our financing and our work goes to create a network of human right defenders, universities, and civil society organizations that are getting information about where the most vulnerable people are, the nature of the crisis as to target our humanitarian aid to those that are most vulnerable. There’s actually a very sophisticated and courageous network of humanitarian organizations that are on the ground that know where the most vulnerable people are, and it is where we focus our humanitarian assistance inside the country.”

MURPHY: “Well I look forward to speaking with you more directly about this specific report and your responses to it. Thank you very much Mr. Chairman.”

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