Environmental Human Rights: News & Updates

The refoundation of Honduras took two more important steps this month. After the successful electoral win of the opposition in November, the initially divided opposition in Congress came together this month and the US officially requested the extradition of JOH for his drug trafficking ties which led to his arrest. Of course, this does not mean that the old power structures are gone, they are still in place, especially in the Judiciary. But change seems possible. This also included the announcement to demilitarize the prisons as well as the state security forces in general. There were other things to celebrate in February, especially the liberation of the Guapinol defenders after over 900 days illegally imprisoned. But the way to a Honduras respecting human rights is still long and steep. Three members of the LGBTQ+ community were murdered in the first week of February; the Minosa mining company seems to be free to ignore court rulings and go on with the exhumation of a Maya Chortí cemetery in Azacualpa; and the indigenous Lenca Tierras del Padre community faced eviction threats. Welcome to another month in Honduras.

The Confederation of Federations of the Salvadoran Agrarian Reform (CONFRAS) considers that this year there will be a decrease in the national production of basic grains and vegetables, given the increased cost of inputs for agricultural production and little government support. They say that this, in turn, will generate more unemployment, poverty, hunger and greater emigration of the rural population. “The increase in prices of agricultural inputs and gas is generating a drop in productivity and reduction in cultivated areas. If this problem is not solved, there will be an expanded food crisis. With the increase in the cost of living in the country during 2022, poverty rates, which have been increasing since 2020, will skyrocket even more” said Alejandra Góchez, from the CONFRAS board of directors.

Dear friends,

The times don’t seem very good for making progress on the climate crisis. The Biden administration provided some great rhetoric during the recent COP26 meeting in Glasgow, but then came home and backtracked where it really matters, on policy decisions.

More recently, the terrible news of the brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine has had the effect, among many bad effects, of distracting attention from the very important new IPCC report, which should have been a serious warning to governments and people alike.

With the inauguration of President Xiomara Castro, hopes of reducing the socio-environmental and agrarian conflict in Honduras resurfaced. In fact, at the national level, various organizations have repeatedly called for the need to intervene in historical conflicts such as the one that occurred in the Valle del Bajo Aguán, department of Colón, which has resulted in the murder of hundreds of peasants, families conflicted and impoverished communities. In this article, a series of strategic challenges for the peasant movement in the current political context are identified, in the effort to move towards a democratic solution to the conflict.

Ten years ago today, the Peaceful Resistance of La Puya was born in defense of community water, life, and health and against an illegal mine. On March 2, 2012, the communities of San José de Golfo and San Pedro Ayampuc united and established a protest camp outside of the entrance of the mine, which had been imposed without their free, prior, and informed consent. For ten long years, the resistance has struggled in the face of threats, intimidation, an attempted assassination, and a violent eviction. Due to the tenacity and determination of the Peace Resistance of La Puya, which included taking the case to the highest court, the mining license of the project was provisionally suspended in 2016, when the Supreme Court ruled that the affected communities were never consulted on the project and directly violated their rights, as established in the International Labor Organization Treaty’s Convention 169.

A Colombian conservationist who saved a rare species of parrot from extinction, a young feminist activist in Afghanistan, and two poets in Myanmar who used words to protest against the military coup were among 358 human rights defenders murdered in 35 countries last year. As in previous years, most killings took place in the Americas and in the Asia-Pacific region. Colombia, where activists are routinely targeted by armed groups despite the 2016 peace accord, remained the most dangerous country to be a human rights defender, with 138 deaths recorded. The majority of those killed, 59%, worked on land, environmental and indigenous rights, where their activities disrupted the economic interests of corporations and individuals in mining, logging and other extractive industries.

The government, which was sworn in last month, also said that it would cancel environmental permits for mining operations across the country. For decades, indigenous groups have complained of legal and illegal mining in their ancestral lands. Honduras mines gold, silver, copper, lead and zinc but on Monday the Ministry of Mining described "extractive exploitation" as "harmful to the state of Honduras". It argued that mining threatened natural resources and public health as well as limiting access to water.