Environmental Human Rights: News & Updates

This article by Consortium News examines the Zones for Employment and Economic Development (ZEDEs) in Honduras and how tech billionaires like Peter Thiel profit of neocolonialist enclaves, allowed to have their own government, police force, courts, laws and any taxes collected, while indigenous people that have been dependent on that very land are subjected to exploitation, persecution and displacement.  

This aricle published in The Guardian gives insight on what consequences the pardoning of convicted drug smuggler and former president of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernandez might have on enviromental defenders in Honduras.  Impunity for violent crimes committed against environmental defenders gives a green light to would-be assassins. In February 2025, an environmental defender in the central department of Comayagua, Juan Bautista, and his son were ambushed and killed, with their bodies dismembered and discarded in a canyon. These were just two of at least 155 murders of land and environmental defenders in Honduras documented by Global Witness between 2012 and 2024, the vast majority unresolved.

In response to Trump's pardon of Juan Orlando Hernández, one environmental defender noted: “There is a sense that the brakes are off again. People feel exposed.”

This article by InSight Crime reviews the conspiratorial nature of the Berta Cáceres murder ten years ago. In February 2025, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights announced the creation of the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (Grupo Interdisciplinario de Expertos Independientes – GIEI) responsible for producing this report. ary 2025 The report’s investigators tied one deposit in the amount of $2.6 million that development banks made to the account of CONCASA (a shell company) in December 2015 directly to Cáceres’ murderers.

Protests rarely incite policy or cultural changes overnight. Often, their rates of impact are much more gradual. For that reason, looking at them through a historical lens – when movements can be digested in terms of years, or even decades – is a helpful way to appreciate the tangible effect of taking to the streets.

More than 150 faith-based organizations from 25 countries launched an open letter on supporting an El Salvadoran ban on metals mining that was overturned by right-wing President Nayib Bukele in 2024. 

“We stand in solidarity with civic and religious leaders who are being persecuted and imprisoned for working against injustices, including the devastation that metals mining would cause their communities.”

Thank you to all who gathered with IRTF on November 9 for our annual commemoration event to mark the 45th anniversary of the sacrifice of four US women missioners in El Salvador. In response to that horrific tragedy, people of faith and conscience in Cleveland founded IRTF as a way to carry forward their legacy—taking action in solidarity with oppressed and marginalized communities as they struggle for peace, dignity, and justice.

IRTF board and staff wishes to thank all the volunteers who helped us set up, decorate, run the event and pack up at the end of the night, Pilgrim Church for hosting us, the kitchen staff at Guanaquitas pupsería for preparing our dinner, Megan Wilson-Reitz for coordinating our social hour (and the many kitchen volunteers!), Salim and Lucía for coordinating our raffle/auction, Pastor Jay for running the tech, and all who participated in the service and speaker program.

To our 46 co-sponsors: Thank you for your financial support that helps us continue calling people into solidarity with oppressed peoples in Central America and Colombia. We are deeply appreciative of your affirmation of our mission and ongoing commitment to this important work.