The Carter Center has had a variety of activities over the years. As I said, we've done election monitoring through 2006, but we've not done it since then; the Venezuelans have not invited international election missions since then. They've invited individuals, but not systematic organizational missions.
We've also done mediation, particularly between 2002 and 2004. Since 2008 we've been working with the media sector, media professionals, trying to address the polarization. The polarization continues in the media, and many professional journalists feel pressured to follow the particular partisan editorial line of whichever side they're on. We're trying to help them address, dialogue about, and receive training on professional standards. We're trying to improve that.
Access to information and transparency is a critical element. You asked how hard it is to document abuses or concerns; here transparency of government information is a very important issue. It is not always easy to get information from the government, and some private sector journalists have trouble covering even government press conferences and that kind of thing. There is an effort to pass a law on access to public information, but it has not yet passed. The NGO that I mentioned, which tries to monitor all kinds of human rights issues, follows the press to get most of their information, and they monitor hundreds of different press media outlets in order to get it. You can get a variety of views within the press about that. We've been working with that sector.
I go once or twice a year and I try to meet with various civil society organizations. We sometimes work with them in hemispheric arenas as well, at the OAS general assemblies, and we meet with the civil society groups of those participating from Venezuela. We have a lot of contact with various groups.