IWA Stands with Venezuela: No to U.S. Sanctions and Threats - Fight Fascism!

The International Women’s Alliance (IWA) unequivocally condemns the latest threats issued by U.S. President Donald Trump against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, including public statements signaling a possible total blockade of Venezuelan oil exports and further escalation of coercive measures. These threats represent the continuation of a long-standing U.S. strategy aimed at economic strangulation, political destabilization, and regime change.

For more than a decade, Venezuela has been subjected to unilateral coercive measures imposed by the United States, including financial sanctions, oil-sector sanctions, asset freezes, shipping restrictions, and secondary sanctions targeting third countries. These measures — imposed without UN authorization — are widely documented to have severely restricted Venezuela’s ability to import food, medicine, fuel, and industrial supplies, disproportionately harming women, children, the elderly, and working-class families.

A naval or oil blockade, whether declared formally or enforced through interdictions and sanctions, would constitute an act of collective punishment and a grave violation of international law, including the UN Charter, which prohibits the use or threat of force against the sovereignty and political independence of any state.

Earlier this week, the Trump administration escalated its rhetoric further by labeling the Venezuelan government as a “Foreign Terrorist Organization,” a designation that echoes the false and dangerous pretexts used to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Such labeling is not a legal finding but a political weapon — one historically used to manufacture consent for war, sanctions, and foreign intervention.

These threats must be taken seriously. The Trump administration has openly embraced belligerent and interventionist doctrines, asserting the right to use economic warfare, military force, and extraterritorial sanctions to impose U.S. dominance. In the case of Venezuela, these policies are transparently linked to Washington’s strategic interest in controlling the largest proven oil reserves in the world and dismantling a government that refuses to submit to imperial dictates.

The history of U.S. aggression in Latin America and the Caribbean is long, bloody, and unmistakable. It includes coups, invasions, proxy wars, and regime-change operations:
Argentina (1976), Bolivia (1971), Brazil (1964), Chile (1973), the Dominican Republic (1965), Guatemala, Haiti, Nicaragua, Panama, Cuba — and prior attempts to overthrow the Venezuelan government itself. This pattern is not accidental; it is the historical expression of imperial power seeking to crush sovereignty and popular self-determination.

As the United States intensifies its efforts to starve Venezuela into submission, it is women who bear the heaviest burden: mothers struggling to feed their families, caregivers facing shortages of medicine, and working women confronting the social devastation caused by economic siege. Imperialist war — whether waged with bombs or with sanctions — is a weapon historically used against nations asserting their independence.

The International Women’s Alliance is composed primarily of women from the Global South, many of whom are actively resisting imperialism, neocolonialism, and economic domination in their own countries. We recognize these attacks on Venezuela as part of a broader global assault on sovereign peoples, particularly those who refuse to bow to U.S. hegemony.

We refuse to stand by while the U.S. empire — indifferent to human suffering and driven by profit and domination — continues its acts of aggression against Venezuela and the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean.

We stand with the women and people of Venezuela.

Women of the world say:

Hands Off Venezuela!
Stop U.S. aggression!
Fight fascism!