President Xiomara Castro has largely failed to deliver on promises to strengthen human rights and democratic institutions in Honduras.
Honduras continues to face long-standing structural challenges, including systemic corruption, political interference in the judicial system, insecurity, a disproportionate percentage of the population living in poverty, and deadly attacks against environmental activists.
In February, parliament appointed new Supreme Court justices. The 15 justices were chosen from a list compiled by a committee on merit, but lawmakers, as in previous years, divided the vacancies among political parties. As of October, parliament’s selection of a new attorney general had been delayed as political parties vied to appoint someone who suited their interests.
Additionally, as of October, the government was continuing negotiations with the UN Secretary-General to establish a UN-backed international commission to combat corruption and impunity in Honduras.
Judicial independence and the fight against corruption
The 15 Supreme Court justices appointed by Congress in February serve seven-year terms. Legislators maintained the partisan practice of proportional allocation among political parties, but this time they selected on merit from a list drawn up by a nominating committee, an improvement. Legislators also selected the country’s first Afro-Honduran judge, in line with Honduras’ statutory gender equality requirements.
The government and the UN secretary-general are negotiating the establishment of an international commission to combat corruption and impunity under a memorandum of understanding signed in December 2022. Between July and October, a group of UN experts made three visits to Honduras to assess the feasibility and legal framework for such a commission.
In July, the Legislature repealed Act 57-2020, which had impeded prosecutors’ efforts to obtain key documents in corruption investigations, and amended Act 93-2021, which had created obstacles for money laundering prosecutions. In August, the Legislature repealed Act 116-2019, which effectively barred the Attorney General’s Office from investigating misuse of public funds by lawmakers for up to seven years until an administrative audit was conducted.
Gabriela Castellanos, director of the National Anti-Corruption Institute, an independent body tasked by law in 2005 with fighting corruption, left Honduras in June after receiving threats after publishing a report on nepotism in the government. She returned a month later to continue her work to expose corruption.
Oscar Chinchilla was appointed attorney general in 2018 in violation of a constitutional provision that requires the attorney general to be selected from a list prepared by a nominating committee. Chinchilla’s term ends on August 31, 2023, and the nominating committee selected five candidates to replace him, but some civil society groups have said the process was influenced by political interests. Political maneuvering continues in Congress, and as of October no agreement on a new attorney general has been reached.
Attacks on human rights defenders
According to a report by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Honduras, 236 human rights defenders were harassed, threatened or attacked between January and August, with at least 13 killed. Eleven have been killed in all of 2022. 75% of the activists attacked and more than 90% of those killed were environmental or land activists.
In January, environmental activists Jairo Bonilla and Ali Domínguez were killed in Guapinol, Colon department, after they had previously received threats to stop protecting the Guapinol and San Pedro rivers. In June, Ali’s brother, environmental activist Okeli Domínguez, was shot dead in Guapinol.
The mechanism that Honduras created in 2015 to protect journalists, human rights defenders, and judicial officials has serious flaws: it lacks financial independence, competent staff trained on human rights issues, and the trust of human rights defenders who fear providing personal information that could fall into the hands of blackmailers.
Economic and social rights
About 80% of people living in rural Honduras live in poverty, earning less than $7 a day. Nearly everyone lives in extreme poverty, earning less than $4 a day, according to the latest official data for 2021.
As of March 2023, official data shows that 14 percent of Hondurans are illiterate, including 31 percent of those over 60. Only 56 percent of children ages 12 to 14 and 29 percent of children ages 15 to 17 attend school.
Official data from March 2023 also shows that remittances make up about 8% of Hondurans’ total income source. World Bank data from 2022 puts remittances at 27% of GDP, the highest percentage in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Security and Prison Conditions
Honduras is one of the most violent countries in the world, with police reporting 3,661 homicides in 2022, giving it a murder rate of 38 per 100,000 people. According to Insight Crime, a think tank and media organization that reports on crime and security, Honduras has the second-highest murder rate in Latin America and the Caribbean after Jamaica. Preliminary police data shows that there were 2,341 homicides from January to September 2023, a 16% decrease compared to the same period in 2022.
In December 2022, Chairman Castro declared a state of emergency in several parts of the country, including the capital, suspending freedom of association and assembly, and the right to be informed of the reasons for arrest. Honduras’ OHCHR expressed concern about the prolonged state of emergency without a comprehensive, rights-based security policy. The government justified the state of emergency by pointing to an increase in organized crime.
In June, gang violence erupted at a women’s prison, leaving at least 46 dead, prompting the Castro government to place prisons under military control – a common move in Honduras but with no tangible results and appearing to exacerbate human rights abuses.
As of September, prisons were holding approximately 19,000 detainees, exceeding 72 percent of capacity, with almost half in pretrial detention, according to official statistics.
Women and Girls’ Rights
Honduras has the highest rate of femicide, defined as “the killing of a woman by a man in an unequal power relationship between the sexes,” in Latin America, according to 2021 data from the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. Centro de Derechos de Mujeres, a Honduran non-governmental organization (NGO) that monitors the media, counted 317 femicide cases from January to September 2023.
Abortion is illegal under all circumstances in Honduras, and performing or administering an abortion carries a prison sentence of up to six years. Newly appointed Supreme Court justices in March upheld an earlier ruling that rejected arguments that the abortion ban was unconstitutional.
In March, Congress approved a law requiring comprehensive sex education to prevent teen pregnancy. After fierce opposition from conservative groups, President Castro announced in July that he was vetoing the law.
In March, Castro signed an executive order ending the ban on the sale and use of emergency contraception.
Migration, asylum and internal displacement
The Mexican Refugee Agency reported that 31,055 Hondurans applied for asylum in Mexico between January and September, second only to Haitians. Many head to the United States. Migrants face serious risks along the way, including kidnapping, robbery and discrimination.
The government reported that 32,727 Hondurans were deported between January and July, including 12% who were children. More than half were from the United States, and more than a third were from Mexico.
Between January and September, 340,611 migrants entered Honduras without proper documentation or without following the required procedures, more than the total number who entered in the entire year of 2022. Of these, more than 45% were Venezuelans, followed by Cubans, Ecuadorians and Haitians, each accounting for more than 10%.
In March, President Castro signed a law to strengthen government assistance to internally displaced communities and individual victims. Gang violence and human rights violations caused approximately 191,000 people to become internally displaced between 2004 and 2018, according to the latest official data.
Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity
Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people in Honduras continue to suffer high levels of violence and discrimination in all aspects of life, forcing some to flee the country. Catrachas, a Honduran organization that monitors media coverage, recorded 40 homophobic or transphobic murders between January and October 2023.
Honduras has not complied with important measures ordered by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in 2021 following the killing of a transgender woman, Vicky Hernández, during a military coup in 2009. Among other requirements, the ruling ordered the creation of procedures for criminal investigations of cases motivated by anti-LGBT bias and procedures for allowing transgender people to change their name and gender on official documents to reflect their gender identity. As of October, no such procedures or procedures had been established.
Rights of people with disabilities
Deficits in public infrastructure, difficulties accessing employment, unfair treatment in public transport services and poor access to information are some of the barriers faced by people with disabilities in Honduras, according to a 2022 Ombudsman report, which estimates that 14% of Hondurans have some kind of physical, sensory, intellectual or psychosocial disability.
Key international actors
Honduras severed diplomatic ties with Taiwan in March in support of the “One China” policy, which considers Taiwan an integral part of the People’s Republic of China. Honduras and China have agreed to Honduras’ participation in the Belt and Road Initiative, a trillion-dollar project to stimulate Chinese investment and advance foreign policy interests.
As a member of the UN Human Rights Council, Honduras maintained a cautious stance on human rights issues throughout 2023. It abstained on resolutions to extend the mandate of the UN Group of Experts investigating systematic human rights violations in Nicaragua and to renew the mandate of the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Russia and Belarus. However, it voted in favor of renewing the mandate of the UN Group of Experts investigating human rights violations in Syria and the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran.