United Nations prepares Venezuela’s post-earthquake reconstruction plan

By late September, Venezuela is expected to have a reconstruction plan in place following the June 24 earthquakes. At an official event, interim President Delcy Rodríguez launched the Post-Earthquake Needs Assessment Plan, which will be coordinated by the United Nations, whose humanitarian teams have been deployed in the country since 2019. Working groups began meeting on Thursday to develop a reconstruction road map for the disaster response, which must address the needs of 1.3 million affected people, including those who lost family members and homes, as well as livelihoods, jobs and others who were already living in vulnerable conditions before the earthquakes in the regions hardest hit by the damage.

The Post-Disaster Needs Assessment (PDNA) is a methodology developed by the United Nations. Government officials and specialists from various U.N. agencies are taking part in the effort, which will assess needs that emerged in seven affected states. Even before the earthquakes, some 600,000 people in the disaster zone required humanitarian assistance. An additional 700,000 people have since been affected. The disaster struck a country already facing deep vulnerabilities. At the beginning of 2026, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that 7.9 million people in Venezuela required urgent assistance. Following the twin earthquakes, that figure has risen above nine million. The U.N. has added $299 million to its Humanitarian Response Plan to assist the newly affected population.

Reconstruction involves far more than rebuilding damaged structures. Restoring essential services such as water and electricity, which are unreliable across much of the country, is also a priority. The European Union and the World Bank are participating in the plan, with support from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and CAF, the Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean.

“Our objective goes beyond rebuilding infrastructure: it is to fully restore families’ lives, strengthen human development and build more humane communities that promote wellbeing and harmony with nature,” Rodríguez said during the announcement, where she thanked and honored Gianluca Rampolla, the U.N. resident coordinator whose mission in Venezuela ends this week.

It is unclear how Venezuela could finance such a reconstruction effort. The country has endured years of economic hardship and declining revenues due to mismanagement and corruption and, since 2019, economic sanctions. The renegotiation of Venezuela’s massive debt burden is now under review as Washington oversees talks with the Venezuelan government. International assistance for earthquake recovery could be linked to possible debt-relief measures.

In La Guaira, controlled demolitions are set to begin on buildings deemed at risk of collapse, even as some families are still searching for bodies. On Wednesday, residents of a Misión Vivienda public housing complex in the Playa Grande area asked demolition experts to postpone the demolition of one of the towers that was left leaning by the earthquake. It was scheduled to take place on Thursday.

Transport Minister Francisco Garcés, who heads the presidential commission assessing the safety and habitability of damaged infrastructure, said this week that no building would be demolished if there were still bodies to be recovered inside. “Each case will be analyzed individually,” he said. To date, according to Garcés, 32,000 buildings have been inspected. Half have been deemed habitable, while a quarter sustained repairable damage and another quarter received a red tag, indicating severe structural damage.

Reconstruction planning is moving forward, however, amid a lack of transparency. This Friday marks one week since authorities last updated the official death toll and the number of people affected, figures the government had previously released daily. The School of Economic and Social Sciences at Andrés Bello Catholic University (UCAB), the institution that has released the Living Conditions Survey (ENCOVI) since 2014, widely regarded as the country’s most comprehensive statistical assessment, warns that the lack of information is hampering efforts to accurately assess needs.

The publication of economic data on national accounts, balance of payments, international investment positions, public finances, government budgets and borrowing laws, as well as census data, household surveys and epidemiological bulletins, has been suspended or interrupted for more than a decade.

“Information necessary to promote opportunities for production, financing, investment and consumption, and to guide, organize and evaluate public policies in different regions of the country, is currently not available, despite the approval since January 2026 of new laws aimed at attracting investment, the announced renegotiation of external debt, the hoped-for stabilization of prices and exchange rates, and the resumption of government relations with multilateral organizations,” the faculty said in a statement.

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