NAGKAISA STATEMENT ON THE U.S. ATTACK ON VENEZUELA

NAGKAISA condemns in the strongest terms the U.S. military attack on Venezuela. This act of aggression violates national sovereignty and international law and directly endangers the lives, jobs, and welfare of Venezuelan workers and their families.

As trade unionists, we recognize that war, foreign intervention, and economic coercion always fall hardest on working people—destroying livelihoods, weakening labor rights, and undermining public services. This attack is clearly another attempt by the United States to secure control over Venezuela’s vast oil resources, once again putting profit and corporate interests over the lives and rights of workers.

We are not blind to Venezuela’s internal political crisis. Maduro’s democratic legitimacy has long been contested—particularly his 2018 election and his most recent third term vote, which the opposition and many observers have challenged as tainted by fraud, intimidation, and violence. But even contested legitimacy does not give any foreign power a legal license to invade, bomb, kidnap, or “run” another country. The future of Venezuela must be decided by Venezuelans, through genuinely free and credible democratic processes—not by foreign guns, sanctions, or geopolitical fiat.

Even if the US president claims that his country has serious grievances against Maduro and his wife, it cannot simply attack another sovereign nation without violating international law: the UN Charter’s prohibition on the use of force (Article 2(4)), and the core principles of sovereignty and non-intervention. Absent UN Security Council authorization or a valid claim of self-defense under Article 51, such an invasion is unlawful and offends peremptory (jus cogens) norms, including the prohibition of aggression.

The Trump administration might have committed the crime of aggression, which the court at Nuremberg described as the supreme crime, and commonly understood by the community of nations as “the worst crime of all.”

NAGKAISA stands in solidarity with Venezuelan workers and trade unions in their struggle for peace, democracy, and social justice. We call on workers’ organizations and democratic movements worldwide to oppose imperialist war, resource plunder, and all forms of foreign domination.

Hands off Venezuela.

Stop imperialist war and resource grabbing.

#HandsOffVenezuela