From Tragedy to Reform: How S.L.’s Ruling Could Prevent Future Deaths in Venezuela

From Tragedy to Reform: How S.L.’s Ruling Could Prevent Future Deaths in Venezuela

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) has ordered Venezuela to pay compensation to the family of S.L., a UK national who died in custody in 2001, and to adopt structural reforms to protect the health and lives of women in detention, especially those with chronic and mental-health conditions. The decision offers long-overdue redress to her family, and a pathway toward preventing similar deaths in the future.

In its report, published on 19 December 2025, the IACHR found Venezuela internationally responsible for violations of the rights to life, personal integrity, health, fair trial, and judicial protection arising from S.L.’s detention and death at the Instituto Nacional de Orientación Femenina (INOF) in Los Teques. The Commission concluded that the State failed to provide adequate medical care to S.L., who was a known insulin-dependent Type I diabetic, and later failed to investigate her death with due diligence and within a reasonable time.

S.L.’s death, a result of systemic health-care failures

S.L. was imprisoned in 2000 for drug-related offences. Authorities were aware of her chronic medical and mental-health needs, yet she did not receive systematic care or a psychiatric assessment, despite repeated warnings to the Venezuelan authorities from her family and the UK Embassy. When her diabetic condition deteriorated in March 2001, the absence of appropriate medical staff, delays in hospital transfers, and lack of intensive-care capacity proved fatal.

The Commission concluded that the failures that led to S.L’s death breached the State’s obligations to ensure adequate health care to detainees.

Beyond the loss of life, the IACHR highlighted the profound harm suffered by S.L.’s parents. It found that prolonged judicial inaction, lasting more than nine years, denied them truth, accountability, and effective remedies, compounding their suffering, and violating their rights to due process, judicial protection, and personal integrity.

Recommendations to Venezuela

The Commission ordered Venezuela to provide financial compensation, rehabilitation measures for S.L.’s parents, and to effectively investigate the facts of this case and prosecute those responsible for the excessive delays in the criminal proceedings. Crucially, it also mandated structural reforms at INOF, including improved access to health care in INOF, new emergency medical protocols, and adequate medical staffing for detainees with chronic and mental-health conditions.

The Commission’s recommendations are all the more urgent given that the difficulties in accessing medical care at INOF appear not to have improved since S.L.’s death in 2011. The 2024 report on INOF prepared by the Venezuelan NGO Observatorio Venezolano de Prisiones, entitled Cárcel de mujeres (INOF): Un cementerio de mujeres vivas (“INOF Women’s prison: A graveyard of living women”), states that INOF, Venezuela’s only women’s prison (built for 350 women, but now holding 650), still only has an outpatient clinic, with capacity only for primary health care, so if any specialised medical attention is needed, families have to arrange for a medical appointment to be made at a nearby clinic. Similarly, if medication is needed, this also has to be provided by the women’s families, and INOF only offers the emergency transfer to hospital of those already seriously ill.

The case, filed by REDRESS on behalf of S.L.’s parents in 2011, marks an important step toward accountability, recognition of harm, and meaningful reform to protect lives in detention.