Environmental Human Rights: News & Updates

June 28, 2023 marks 14 years since the 2009 coup in Honduras. The Honduras Solidarity Network (HSN) honors the years of resistance in Honduras to that coup and the 13 years of dictatorship it installed. We recognize that today the Honduran people continue to fight to dismantle all the structures of the post-coup dictatorship and are up against the same powerful forces they faced in 2009. These forces include the U.S. government and other governments such as Canada that supported the coup and were complicit with the narco-dictatorship. Read our statement for the anniversary here.

Many of us in Cleveland had the opportunity to meet water defender Reynaldo Domínguez when he spoke at our Liberation Lab on April 22, 2023. We are sad to report that his brother,  environmental defender Oqueli Domínguez, was brutally killed last week.

On Thursday June 15, Oqueli  was shot by an unidentified gunmen from a motorcycle in front of his family home in Tocoa, northern Honduras. For years the Domínguez family and other environmentalists have been in the crosshair of corporate violence for their activism. Just 6 months ago, in January of 2023, Aly Domínguez, Reynaldo's other brother, and Jairo Bonilla were   killed on their way from from La Concepción and Guapinol. 

So far the local police have not commented on the case, but Reynaldo has stated that the police are trying to frame the attack as a robbery. Reynaldo opposes this downplaying of a most likely politically motivated assassination, saying that the family has nothing of value in their house and pointed at the fact that Oqueli was targeted directly, and separated from his family. Oqueli, together with Reynaldo, his brother Aly and Jairo Bonilla were active in the opposition to an iron oxide mine in the Carlos Escaleras National Park. Together with local environmental groups, the activists have protested the legality of the mining project as well as the damage it will do to the Guapinol and San Pedro rivers.

Honduras is known for being the most dangerous country for environmental defenders, as it provides massive power to corporations and a justice system in which impunity prevails. To find a solution for the ongoing conflict, experts of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights have met with authorities as well as activists. In its final report, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has articulated its deep concerns about the fact that environmental defenders are a common target of violence. So far eight environmental defenders have been killed in 2023 alone. 

As IRTF we deeply condemn the killing of Oqueli and the ongoing attacks on activists around Honduras. We also want to offer our condolences to Reynaldo and the all other members of the the Domínguez family. 

For more information on the case, read our RRN Letter: Honduras 6/15/2023

On behalf of IRTF’s Rapid Response Network (RRN) members, we wrote six letters this month to heads of state and other high-level officials in southern Colombia, Guatemala, and Honduras, urging their swift action in response to human rights abuses occurring in their countries.  We join with civil society groups in Latin America to: (1) protect people living under threat, (2) demand investigations into human rights crimes, (3) bring human rights criminals to justice.

IRTF’s Rapid Response Network (RRN) volunteers write six letters in response to urgent human rights cases each month. We send copies of these letters to US ambassadors, embassy human rights officers, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, regional representatives of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and desk officers at the US State Department. To read the letters, see https://www.irtfcleveland.org/content/rrn , or ask us to mail you hard copies.

One week ago, 33 Democrat representatives urged the U.S. Trade Representative and State Department to eliminate investor-state dispute settlement provisions from current and future trade deals in Honduras and the rest of South-and Central America. In a open letter they state that the investor-state dispute settlements (ISDS) is a "problematic corporate handout" system, which violates affected countries sovereignty.

For US companies the ISDS mechanism is a tool that is supposed to secure investments in Central-and South America by allowing corporations to sue nations for compensation if they abruptly change their policies towards corporate involvement and investment. The ISDS mechanism is closely related to the "Dominican Republic-Central American Free Trade Agreement" (CAFTA-DR). The Free Trade Agreement allows companies to acquire land in these countries and establish autonomous zones in which constitutional labor and environmental requirements are suspended.

In the specific case the congresspeople brought forward the U.S. investment company, Honduras Prospera Inc. claims of, close to $11 Billion in compensations from Honduras, after the Honduran congress repealed the law allowing the autonomous zones. If the compensation claim goes through, the small country would have to pay more than a third of its GDP to a greedy US corporation securing profits through agreements between the strongest and one of the smallest economies in the Americas, while draining Honduran tax payers for its losses.

The claim comes after the Honduran congress repealed the autonomous zones as unconstitutional and made an effort to expel them from their land. Throughout the Americas, the agreement led to a total of $27.8 Billion in ISDS settlement orders, most of which were against Argentina, Venezuela, Peru, Mexico, and Ecuador. If the $10 Billion settlement demand against Honduras would go through, this would blow every other claim out of the water and would open the doors for more companies suing for massive amounts of compensation.

In their paper, the lawmakers wrote that, "the broken ISDS has time and time again worked in favor of big business interests while infringing on the rights and sovereignty of our trading partners and their people." 

We as IRTF are hopeful that the lawmakers' fight against the Dominican Republic-Central American Free Trade Agreement is successful, as it takes away Cental-and South American countries sovereignty and opens the door for human rights abuses, exploitive labor and environmental destruction, though this is unlikely.

But no matter what the outcome will be, we as IRTF will keep on fighting corporate greed and unjust business making in Central America.  

Read the full letter here: https://www.warren.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2023.05.02%20Letter%20to%20T...           

On behaf of IRTF’s Rapid Response Network (RRN) members, we wrote six letters this month to heads of state and other high-level officials in southern Mexico, Colombia, Guatemala, and Honduras, urging their swift action in response to human rights abuses occurring in their countries.  We join with civil society groups in Latin America to: (1) protect people living under threat, (2) demand investigations into human rights crimes, (3) bring human rights criminals to justice.

IRTF’s Rapid Response Network (RRN) volunteers write six letters in response to urgent human rights cases each month. We send copies of these letters to US ambassadors, embassy human rights officers, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, regional representatives of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and desk officers at the US State Department. To read the letters, see https://www.irtfcleveland.org/content/rrn , or ask us to mail you hard copies.