"[13] Political corruption, chronic shortages of food and medicine, closure of businesses, unemployment, deterioration of productivity, authoritarianism, human rights violations, gross economic mismanagement and high dependence on oil have contributed to the crisis.

[14][15] As a response to human rights abuses, the degradation in the rule of law, and corruption, the European Union, the Lima Group, the US and other countries have applied sanctions against government officials and members of the military and security forces.

[33][34][35] National and international analysts and economists stated the crisis is not the result of a conflict, natural disaster, or sanctions, but the consequences of populist policies and corrupt practices that began under the Chávez administration's Bolivarian Revolution and continued under Maduro.

[44] Following increased international sanctions throughout 2019, the Maduro government abandoned policies established by Chávez such as price and currency controls, which resulted in the country seeing a temporary rebound from economic decline before COVID entered Venezuela.

[1] Political corruption, chronic shortages of food and medicine, closure of businesses, unemployment, deterioration of productivity, authoritarianism, human rights violations, gross economic mismanagement and high dependence on oil have also contributed to the worsening crisis.

"[10] In August, Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon declared that there was a humanitarian crisis in Venezuela caused by the lack of basic needs, including food, water, sanitation and clothing.

[84] In March 2019, The Wall Street Journal said that "Mr. Maduro has long used food and other government handouts to pressure impoverished Venezuelans to attend pro-government rallies and to support him during elections as the country's economic meltdown has intensified.

[123][124][125] Maduro ran for a third consecutive term, while former diplomat Edmundo González Urrutia represented the Unitary Platform (Spanish: Plataforma Unitaria Democrática; PUD), the main opposition political alliance, after the Venezuelan government barred leading candidate María Corina Machado from participating.

[131] A 6 August article in The New York Times stated that the CNE declaration that Maduro won "plunged Venezuela into a political crisis that has claimed at least 22 lives in violent demonstrations, led to the jailing of more than 2,000 people and provoked global denunciation.

Venezuelans were spending "all day waiting in lines" to buy rationed food, "pediatric wards filled up with underweight children, and formerly middle-class adults began picking through rubbish bins for scraps".

[148] Doctors at 21 public hospitals in 17 Venezuelan states told The New York Times in 2017 that "their emergency rooms were being overwhelmed by children with severe malnutrition—a condition they had rarely encountered before the economic crisis began", and that "hundreds have died".

[157] Following increased international sanctions throughout 2019, the Maduro government abandoned policies established by Chávez such as price and currency controls, which resulted in the country seeing a temporary rebound from economic decline before COVID-19 entered Venezuela the following year.

[160][161] Venezuela's reliance on imported goods and the complicated exchange rates initiated under Chávez led to increasing shortages during the late 2000s and into the 2010s that affected the availability of medicines and medical equipment in the country.

[142] In March 2019, The Wall Street Journal reported that the "collapse of Venezuela's health system, once one of the best in Latin America, has led to a surge in infant and maternal mortality rates and a return of rare diseases that were considered all but eradicated.

[142] The Washington Post stated that the HRW/Johns Hopkins report "paints an extremely grim picture of life in Venezuela, whose once-prosperous economy has imploded because of mismanagement and corruption under Maduro";[174] it documents rising maternal and infant death, spread of preventable diseases, food insecurity, and child malnutrition.

[142] The HRW summary of the HRW/Johns Hopkins report said, "The Venezuelan authorities during the presidency of Nicolás Maduro have proven unable to stem the crisis, and have in fact exacerbated it through their efforts to suppress information about the scale and urgency of the problems.

[172] The HRW/Johns Hopkins report says: "Venezuela is the only country in the world where large numbers of individuals living with HIV have been forced to discontinue their treatment as a result of the lack of availability of antiretroviral (ARV) medicines.

"[142] In late 2014, Venezuelans began saying that due to shortages of medicines, it was hard to find acetaminophen to help alleviate symptoms of the newly introduced chikungunya virus, a potentially lethal mosquito-borne disease.

[196] According to Amnesty International, causes of the increase in maternal deaths include a lack of medical personnel and supplies like anticoagulants, scar healing cream, painkillers, antibiotics, antiseptics, and other tools and equipment.

[211] Urban theorist and author Mike Davis said in July 2011 to The Guardian, "Despite official rhetoric, the Bolivarianist regime has undertaken no serious redistribution of wealth in the cities and oil revenues pay for too many other programmes and subsidies to leave room for new housing construction.

[235][236][237] El País reported in 2014 that Chávez had years earlier assigned colectivos to be "the armed wing of the Bolivarian Revolution" for the Venezuelan government, giving them weapons, communication systems, motorcycles and surveillance equipment to exercise control in the hills of Caracas where police are forbidden entry.

[citation needed] Following the increasing economic partnership between Venezuela and Turkey in October 2016, Turkish Airlines started offering direct flights from December 2016 connecting between Caracas to Istanbul (via Havana, Cuba) in an effort to "link and expand contacts" between the two countries.

[316] As noted petroleum historian, expert, and former San Tomé resident Emma Brossard[317] stated in 2005, "Venezuelan oil fields had a depletion rate of 25 per cent annually [and] there had to be an investment of US$3.4 billion a year to keep up its production."

[citation needed] As a consequence of the energy crisis caused by the war, the United States allowed the American oil and gas company Chevron to resume limited operations in Venezuela again.

[5] Other writers have also compared aspects of the crisis, such as unemployment and GDP contraction, to that of Bosnia and Herzegovina after the 1992–1995 Bosnian War, and those in Russia, Cuba and Albania following the collapse of the Eastern Bloc in 1989 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

[6][7] The European Union, the Lima Group, the United States and other countries have applied individual sanctions against government officials and members of both the military and security forces as a response to human rights violations, corruption, degradation in the rule of law and repression of democracy.

[332] In 2018, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) documented that "information gathered indicates that the socioeconomic crisis had been unfolding for several years prior to the imposition of these sanctions".

[364] Hundreds or thousands of Cuban security forces have allegedly been operating in Venezuela while professor Robert Ellis of United States Army War College described the between several dozen and 400 Wagner Group mercenaries provided by Russia as the "palace guard of Nicolás Maduro".

[376] Responding when asked about the claims in a BBC interview, Juan Guaidó stressed that its findings suggested only a possible theory, that it was the newspaper's point of view and that a total of three trucks were burned, while the footage focused on one.

[383] The Wall Street Journal said that the acceptance of humanitarian shipments by Maduro was his first acknowledgement that Venezuela is "suffering from an economic collapse", adding that "until a few days ago, the government maintained there was no crisis and it didn't need outside help".