The United Nations human rights office said the US operation in Venezuela undermined a core principle of international law, cautioning against the use of force against another state’s sovereignty.
“States must not threaten or use force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state,” Ravina Shamdasani, spokeswoman for the UN rights office, told reporters in Geneva.
She rejected US justifications that cited Venezuela’s “longstanding and appalling human rights violations” as grounds for the raid.
“Accountability for human rights violations cannot be achieved by unilateral military intervention in violation of international law,” she said.
Shamdasani said, “We fear that the current instability and further militarization in the country resulting from the US intervention will only make the situation worse.”
Separately, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said the international community must take a firm stance against US attack on Venezuela that violated the UN Charter and fundamental principles of international law.
Meanwhile, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez called the attacks on Venezuela and the arrest of Maduro illegal.
At the United Nations Security Council, members including key US allies warned that the abduction of Maduro and his wife by US special forces could establish a precedent with far-reaching consequences for international law.
The 15-member council convened an emergency meeting on Monday in New York, where the Venezuelan president and his wife were also expected to face drug trafficking charges in a US federal court.
Venezuela’s ambassador to the United Nations, Samuel Moncada, condemned the operation as “an illegitimate armed attack lacking any legal justification”.
His remarks were echoed by Cuba, Colombia, and permanent Security Council members Russia and China.
“(The US) imposes the application of its laws outside its own territory and far from its coasts, where it has no jurisdiction, using assaults and the appropriation of assets,” Cuba’s ambassador Ernesto Soberon Guzman said, adding that such measures had negatively affected Cuba.
Russia’s ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said the United States could not “proclaim itself as some kind of a supreme judge, which alone bears the right to invade any country, to label culprits, to hand down and to enforce punishments irrespective of notions of international law, sovereignty and non-intervention”.
Criticism also came from traditional US allies Mexico and Denmark, both of which US President Donald Trump has previously threatened with military action.
Mexico’s ambassador Hector Vasconcelos said the council had an “obligation to act decisively and without double standards” towards the United States, adding that it was for “sovereign peoples to decide their destinies,” according to a UN readout.
His comments followed Trump’s recent statement that “something will have to be done about Mexico” and its drug cartels after Maduro’s abduction.
Denmark said that “no state should seek to influence political outcomes in Venezuela through the use of threat of force or through other means inconsistent with international law”.
“The inviolability of borders is not up for negotiation,” Denmark’s ambassador Christina Markus Lassen told the council, in an oblique reference to Trump’s threat to annex Greenland, a self-governed Danish territory.
France, another permanent Security Council member, also criticized the United States, marking a shift from French President Emmanuel Macron’s earlier remarks that Venezuelans “can only rejoice” over Maduro’s capture.
“The military operation that has led to the capture of Maduro runs counter to the principle of peaceful dispute resolution and runs counter to the principle of non-use of force,” said French deputy ambassador Jay Dharmadhikari.
Responding to the criticism, US ambassador Mike Waltz described the abduction of Maduro and his wife as a “surgical law enforcement operation facilitated by the US military against two indicted fugitives of American justice”.
Meanwhile, the White House defended its air strikes on Venezuela and surrounding waters, as well as Maduro’s abduction, as necessary to protect US national security, citing unproven claims that Maduro supported “narcoterrorist” drug cartels.