When Venezuela denounced the American Convention on Human Rights (American Convention) in 2013, many feared that the country’s long and painful history of human rights violations would no longer be heard before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR). Six years later, in 2019, Juan Guaidó attempted to reverse that withdrawal, re-ratifying the Convention in his capacity as president of the democratically elected National Assembly and interim president of the country. This event followed Venezuela’s constitutional crisis, which saw the National Assembly contest Nicolás Maduro’s disputed re-election in an effort to restore democracy. Guaidó was recognized by the Organization of American States and over 50 countries. Yet the question remained: could a regional human rights tribunal recognize the acts of an authority that, while democratically legitimate, lacked effective territorial control?
In Chirinos Salamanca et al. v. Venezuela, decided in August 2025, the IACtHR offered a nuanced but decisive response. It settled the jurisdictional question by validating Venezuela’s 2019 re-ratification, advancing a vision of international justice that privileges democratic legitimacy and victims’ rights over the rigid formalism of treaty law.
A case that reopened Venezuela’s path to international justice
The Chirinos Salamanca case concerned 14 officers of the Chacao Municipal Police, detained in 2016 for the alleged murder of a pro-government journalist. Despite a judicial order granting their conditional release that required biweekly court appearances, the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (SEBIN) ignored the decision. Twelve officers remained arbitrarily detained for over four months, and two for more than 15 months, in flagrant violation of court orders.
When the case reached the IACtHR, Venezuela challenged the court’s competence, arguing that its 2013 withdrawal of the American Convention barred any further proceedings. The court rejected this objection, holding that Venezuela had validly re-ratified the convention in 2019 through the president of its democratically elected National Assembly, acting as interim president. In the court’s view, this act constituted a lawful manifestation of the state’s will to rejoin the convention, since it was carried out by the authority that legitimately represented the Venezuelan people within the Organization of American States.
This subtle but powerful move placed the court ahead of orthodox treaty doctrine and aligned it more closely with the lived reality of institutional collapse and democratic rupture. In doing so, the Inter-American Court reminded the region that, when legality and legitimacy collide, human rights law must serve democracy—not the other way around.
Beyond orthodoxy: Legitimacy versus effective control
Under the traditional framework of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, only governments exercising effective control are competent to bind or unbind the state. This positivist premise—built on the assumption of stable institutions and uncontested authority—collapses in the context of authoritarian regression. Applying it mechanically in cases like Venezuela’s would mean denying millions of citizens any channel for international protection simply because their de facto rulers reject scrutiny.
The court made a subtle but powerful move ahead of orthodox treaty doctrine and aligned it with the lived reality of institutional collapse. By recognizing the democratic legitimacy of the interim president’s actions—rooted in the authority of the National Assembly—the IACtHR pushed back against the idea that only governments exercising effective control may bind the state. In essence, the court affirmed that when legality and legitimacy collide, human rights law must privilege democratic representation over authoritarian control.
This interpretive move has deep consequences. It signals that, in extreme situations, the guardians of human rights treaties must not allow the principle of consent to become an instrument of impunity. The court thereby asserts that legitimacy grounded in democratic representation can, in certain circumstances, sustain a state’s continuity in the international legal order even when its institutions have been captured by authoritarian power.
The right to international justice as an interpretive compass
The Chirinos Salamanca judgment can be read as part of a broader doctrinal evolution within the Inter-American system—one that places the right to access international justice at the core of jurisdictional analysis.
In 2020, the IACtHR held that states may denounce human rights treaties, but only within limits consistent with the protection of fundamental rights. Chirinos Salamanca implicitly extends that logic: if withdrawal is constrained by victims’ rights, re-ratification and jurisdiction must be interpreted through the same human rights lens.
This approach reframes the traditional question—Does the court have jurisdiction?—into a more substantive one: Can victims be deprived of international justice because of internal power struggles? The answer the court gestures toward is “no.” Although the judgment does not explicitly articulate this reasoning, it is implicitly grounded in the right to international justice—a principle derived from the American Convention. Interpreted this way, Chirinos Salamanca suggests that this right operates as an interpretive compass, guiding the court when state sovereignty collides with access to justice.
In doing so, the IACtHR reclaims its role as a court of principles, not merely a tribunal of procedural formalities. Its reading aligns with the broader mission of the Inter-American system: to ensure that legality serves legitimacy, and that form does not prevail over justice. This reasoning resonates far beyond Venezuela: it offers a potential pathway for countries like Nicaragua, where authoritarian consolidation has started to sever ties with international mechanisms.
Looking ahead: Restoring hope through law
The Chirinos Salamanca decision is neither the final word on Venezuela’s return to the Inter-American system nor a wholesale revision of treaty law. But it is a milestone. It suggests that international justice is not a privilege granted by governments, but a right belonging to individuals—a right that survives political ruptures and authoritarian exits.
For Venezuelan victims, the ruling revives the possibility of accountability before the Inter-American Court. For the regional system, it signals that the path forward lies not in formalist debates over who may speak for a state, but in safeguarding who may be heard before international justice bodies.
Ultimately, Chirinos Salamanca reminds us that the legitimacy of the Inter-American project depends on its willingness to adapt law to defend democracy, not the other way around. By choosing principle over form, the court reaffirmed that even beyond withdrawal, international justice can—and must—remain effective.