The institutions Venezuela relies on to carry out repression, commit gross human rights violations and perpetrate crimes against humanity are still standing, a United Nations investigative panel said on September 16, even as it acknowledged a "significant decline" in abuses since the ouster of Nicolás Maduro.

The findings come from the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Venezuela, which is due to present a report and an accompanying research paper to the Human Rights Council in Geneva on September 18. The research paper offers the mission's most detailed assessment yet of pro-government civilian armed groups, known as colectivos, and their ties to the state.

"The reduction in some of the harshest forms of repression is notable, but it does not yet amount in any way to a transformation of the system that made them possible," said Sofía Macher, chair of the mission. "Unless the repressive structures are dismantled, judicial independence is guaranteed and those responsible for human rights violations are duly investigated and sanctioned, any opening will remain fragile and reversible. Venezuelans deserve human rights change that is real and meaningful, not tentative and incomplete."

That fragility, the Mission said, follows a marked drop in long-term detentions and enforced disappearances after Maduro was captured during a US military operation on January 3. Since then, interim President Delcy Rodríguez has governed the country under Washington's tutelage, opening its mineral and oil wealth to US investment and launching tentative dialogue with sections of the opposition. Hundreds of people held for political reasons were freed in the months that followed, and authorities allowed more room for protests, public gatherings and civil society activity.

Yet the security services and intelligence agencies that enforced Maduro-era repression have kept much the same structure, policies and practices. Laws once used to criminalise dissent remain on the books, journalists and civil society groups say they still face obstruction, and no move has been made to disarm or dismantle the colectivos blamed for widespread intimidation at community level. At least 19 officials the mission had previously linked to gross violations still hold, or have been shifted into, senior positions, it said, while accountability for past abuses remains largely absent.

Investigators said torture and ill-treatment of political detainees continued unabated. At the Fuerte Guaicaipuro military installation, they documented prisoners held in pit-like cells dug below ground level, exposed to cold and denied adequate food. At El Rodeo I, a maximum-security prison, the mission recorded forced intubation and extended confinement in a sealed underground cistern that detainees call the "time machine." It said it had opened 64 new torture investigations since January 3 alone, a sign the practices persist.

Beyond the torture cases, hundreds of detainees are held in what the mission called appalling conditions, cut off from safe drinking water, adequate food, medicine and health care. Several deaths in custody, it found, trace back to that neglect combined with mistreatment. One such case involved Víctor Quero Navas, a street vendor who disappeared into detention and died there. His mother, Carmen Teresa Navas, spent more than a year searching for him before authorities confirmed his fate, ten months after he had already died; she herself died ten days later.

Non-governmental groups estimate that between 379 and 500 people are still detained, even after the recent releases sharply cut the number of political prisoners, the mission said, adding that the government's refusal to disclose reliable information leaves it unclear exactly who has been freed, who remains held, or under what legal status. Civil society organisations separately logged at least 214 arbitrary detentions for political reasons between September 1, 2025, and July 29, 2026, with 94% of them recorded before the year's end. Since Maduro's capture, the mission said it has tracked a recurring pattern of brief, arbitrary arrests designed to intimidate opposition figures, reporters and civil society workers rather than hold them long-term.

"We call on the State authorities to take decisive steps towards accountability and to adopt a victim-centered transitional justice framework," said María Eloisa Quintero, one of the mission's experts. "Venezuela should also reverse its withdrawal from the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and cooperate fully with the Court and other international human rights mechanisms. Years of entrenched impunity must give way to accountability."

Fellow mission expert Alex Neve urged Washington and other governments to keep up pressure. "The United States and other influential actors must intensify efforts to press for and advance real human rights change in Venezuela, while also ensuring that their policies and actions neither contribute to human rights violations nor facilitate the commission of international crimes," he said, adding that countries should keep offering international protection to Venezuelans who have left.

On the colectivos, the panel said it had reasonable grounds to believe the government routinely armed the militia with firearms, ammunition, motorcycles, mobile phones and radios, part of a long-standing relationship that also includes political backing, financing, logistics and institutional protection, with personnel at times moving between the security forces and the armed groups. Colectivos have used that backing to run surveillance operations, track down people wanted by security agencies, help crush protests and target government opponents, while their grip on community councils, public services and social programmes lets them reward loyalty and punish dissent, the body said.

Reacting to the findings, Zair Mundaray, a former Venezuelan prosecutor now living in exile in Colombia, told the Spanish newspaper El Mundo that they "confirmed what all Venezuelans know: the entire repressive apparatus of the regime remains intact and functional." Diosdado Cabello, Venezuela's interior minister and widely described as the enforcer of repression under Maduro, has kept control of the security apparatus and become a close ally of President Rodríguez. While Rodriguez was removed from the US sanctions list in April, a $25mn reward for Cabello's arrest over alleged drug trafficking remains unclaimed.