Context: Venezuela has, unlike any other Latin-American country, endured a process characterized by strong socio-political tensions, which have been eroding away at the political life of the country since the late 1980s.  Although it is certain that this crisis has lasted for more than 30 years, it is not certain as to whether it has reached its peak in the 90s and what will become of it in the 21st century.  Therefore, to understand what is happening in Venezuela, one must try to understand that the dimensions of the crisis are structural, extremely complex, and involve multiple factors of diverse nature that could be linked to fundamental political elements, given the inability of the political system (especially in the 80s and 90s) to generate governance conditions necessary to guarantee a minimum amount of efficiency and equal distribution of public goods.

The most recent crisis, starting in 1998, has been a profound process of political transformation, without precedence in the Venezuelan democratic history that originated from multiple factors: (i) corruption in different political and economic spheres of the country; (ii) inefficiency of public services; (iii) absence of an efficient bureaucratic culture; (iv) presence of predatory practices on many occasions in both the public and private sectors; (v) difficulty of the political parties to interpret and fulfill the demands of the ever growing poor sectors of the population, which has led to a literal drainage of traditional parties; (vi) poor communication from the civil society and general public, to be able to participate as a substantial relevant actor; (vii) and above all, a chronic impoverishment for more than twenty years that has left almost 80% of the population in poverty.

In addition, the management of President Hugo Chávez has been characterized for the creation of an important political revolution throughout the country, initiated by: (i) the creation of a Constituent Assembly to reform the National Constitution; (ii) the restoration of a process of change through the creation of the Fifth Republic called the “Bolivian Revolution”; (iii) the re-legitimization of public powers from the promulgation of the new Constitution; and (iv) the re-adaptation of a set of laws in accordance with the proposals of the new Constitution and the ideological guidelines of the government; (v) the dispersion of institutional powers of the Fourth Republic; (vi) the weakening of bipartisanism; (vii) a high participation of the Armed Forces in social and political life; and (viii) a centralization of powers to the presidency. 

This process put the country through eight electoral processes from November 1999 until December 2000, and through two more in 2004 (the Revocatory Referendum and Governor and Mayor Elections) with the current economic, social and political destabilization, as well as the reduction of productive capacity that this has brought and the exhaustion of the people from these constant elections

Youth: Between 1960 and 1980 the number of youths between the ages of 15 and 29 climbed from 1.9 million to 4.4 million.  Between 1980 and 2000 they represented 27% of the population climbing from 4.4 to 6.6 million.  According to the INE demographic information, the Venezuelan society should prepare itself for the demands of around 8 million youths in the first two decades of the 21st century.  In 1960, half of the population was under 17 years of age, while in 2000 this fraction corresponds to youths under the age of 24.

These changes in demographics, that initially brought a surge of importance of youth-related fields, has been translated into a series of demands that have not necessarily been considered in the design of public policies in fields such as education, health, and employment. Expressed in percentages, this means that 21.4% of the Venezuelan population falls into this range, in which 19.6% of these Venezuelan homes are run by youths with the majority being male.

Regarding the socio-economic aspect, it is estimated that more than half of Venezuelan youths live in difficult situations, due to both the high scholastic drop-out rates and the conditions of poverty in which their families live.  According to a report from the Economic Advising Office of the National Assembly, poverty greatly affects youths under 18 years of age.  Poverty affects 56.6% of the general population, while affecting 71.8% of youths under 18 years of age.

Youths are more susceptible to this crisis; more often these youths find themselves in a vicious cycle as victims and multipliers of poverty and exclusion, and in many cases, they are found most involved in violence and crime. The indicators are rather grim: 88% of crimes are committed against male minors under the age of 30; 94% of youths in irregular situations are males; 84% of these youth are between the ages of 18 and 30; 88% of these youths dropped out of primary education; 99% of these youth never went to secondary school; and 60% of the youths in the D and E stratum are outside of the educational system.

Answers for this complex picture are far from reaching the goals of the existing challenges.  The Youth Law, approved in 2002, created a legal framework that allows for the creation of necessary conditions for the development of youths who, through this law, are all individuals between 18 and 28 years of age. However, the Law has hardly had any impact thus far. Basically, it is a more open extension of the Statutory Law for Children and Adolescents (LOPNA), which standardizes the protection of children and youths under 18 years of age.

In this context, the National Youth Institute (INJ), created within the framework of this Law, participates actively in certain government programmes (for example, organizing volunteer youths to help with literacy), especially those denominated as “Missions” in 2003. These represent a series of programmes that attends to some of the most critical indicators in education in a universal and non-targeted manner, particularly in disadvantaged sectors.

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