Environmental Human Rights: News & Updates

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We do not grow bananas in the United States (save the odd local varieties you may find in Hawaii or Puerto Rico). During the four weeks between when a banana is picked to when it is purchased, it travels thousands of miles to get to US grocery stores. So how do they still cost less than apples that are grown locally?

There is no such thing as a cheap product. Somewhere, someone in the supply chain is paying for it—whether that is us, the end consumer, or the farmer, who may be forced by the market into unfair and unsustainable deals. There is always a cost. In the case of bananas, the costs of conventional (non-fair trade certified and non-organic) banana farming are many:

• Poverty
• Underpayment
• Health & safety risks
• Soil depletion
• Water shortages

The UN Human Rights Committee reiterated its concern about the large scale of intimidation and violence and the high rates of killings of human rights defenders committed by both State agents and private individuals or groups. The Committee was also disturbed by the difficulties faced by victims in accessing justice, the lack of effective investigations, and the delays in judicial proceedings. It called on Honduras to adopt effective measures to protect human rights defenders, particularly environmental and land rights defenders, journalists, trade unionists, agrarian and peasant activists, indigenous peoples, Afro-descendants, and LGBTI people. The State party should also promptly and thoroughly investigate these human rights violations, bring those responsible to justice, and provide full reparations to victims. 

Garifuna Afro-Indigenous peoples on Honduras' northern Caribbean coast are facing severe threats and violence from private developers, drug traffickers, and state forces as they seek to reclaim their ancestral lands. Despite a 2015 ruling by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ordering the Honduran government to return these lands, the state has not complied, and the situation has worsened. Since the early 17th century, the Garifuna have lived on this land, relying on subsistence agriculture and fishing. However, the expansion of palm oil plantations, tourism developments, and drug trafficking has threatened their way of life.

Human rights activist Rony Leonidas Castillo Güity recalls seeing changes in his community with the construction of a highway in the early '90s, leading to the influx of outsiders. Now, luxury developments, like the Indura Beach & Golf Resort, have been built on Garifuna land without their consent. Activist Miriam Miranda notes that these territories have been overtaken by African palm oil cultivation, contributing to the displacement of traditional farming and the loss of livelihoods.

The Garifuna communities continue to face criminalization, threats, and violence. More than 150 Garifuna people have been killed, and several leaders have been disappeared or murdered. The Honduran government and military have been accused of acting in favor of private interests, including protecting developers involved in questionable land transactions. Despite international rulings and protests, the Garifuna's struggle for their rights and lands persists, with activists like Miranda emphasizing their desire for peace and a future for their youth.

Over the past decade, the Afro-Indigenous ethnic Garífuna communities in northern Honduras have been expecting that their government would abide by three separate rulings of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to return their stolen lands. That hasn’t happened. After taking their cause to Capitol Hill (along with our friends from the Honduras Solidarity Network), Rep. Cori Bush (01-MO) introduced into the US House of Representatives a resolution supporting Garífuna ancestral territorial rights.

IRTF was in Washington, DC, the second week of June. We walked the House office buildings on Capitol Hill and dropped off memos to the foreign policy aides of 55 US congresspersons who have previously co-sponsored legislation in support of human rights in Honduras. We also visited the offices of all 14 congresspersons from Ohio.

But they need to hear from their constituents!

Please read the email below from our friends at Witness for Peace Solidarity Collective and Latin America Working Group (LAWG). Take a few minutes to contact your congressperson today. Urge that they co-sponsor H.Res.1278.

Thank you!

The issues at hand--mining-linked repression; collusion with corrupt and repressive business partners, governments, security guards, police and military; widespread impunity--are similar to other cases of corporate wrong-doing and criminality around the world. For a number of reasons, however, these legal cases in Canada and Guatemala are painstakingly overcoming legal, jurisdictional and political obstacles (including on-going repression).

Thirteen Q’eqchi’ plaintiffs, sued Hudbay Minerals and CGN (Guatemalan subsidiary company, formerly owned by Hudbay) for mining related repression, having traveled to Toronto (11 of them in November 2017; 2 more in early 2018) to be deposed by Hudbay lawyers as part of the precedent-setting Hudbay/CGN lawsuits.

Two of these mining repression victims are also pursuing a parallel but separate criminal trial in Guatemala against Mynor Padilla, former head of security of Hudbay/CGN.

Read more background at Business and Human Rights Resource Centre

25 years ago, the United Nations adopted the Declaration on Human Rights Defenders. The Declaration has been essential to protect those who defend human rights, but laws and contexts have evolved. The Declaration+25 supplements the Declaration and together they form a comprehensive set of standards to protect the right to defend rights.

Public Citizen's Trade Justice project has a new in-depth report called Corporate Colonization of Latin America: How ISDS Harms Indigenous Communities, which explores ISDS’s colonial roots and the disproportionate harm it has caused to Indigenous peoples across Latin America.  The report is available now both as a website and as a PDF, so give it a look and please consider sharing it on social media or on any lists! 

 To release the report, earlier this month we hosted a special delegation of Latin American Indigenous leaders in Washington, DC to speak with policymakers, diplomats, and civil society about the adverse impacts of corporate trade policy on their communities.

For years, Garífuna community members and leaders have been threatened, arrested, abducted and murdered. Most notably, in July 2020, four Garífuna men were abducted at gunpoint by men wearing uniforms bearing the logo of a Honduran security forces unit. Instead of calling for an investigation into those responsible, the Honduran Attorney General has called for criminal proceedings against leaders of the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras (OFRANEH).

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights and Inter-American Commission on Human Rights have determined that the Garífuna community’s rights have repeatedly been violated by the Honduran government, yet little has changed regarding their treatment. This resolution condemns the violence toward the Garífuna people while calling for accountability from the Honduran government and other international institutions for their role in these abuses.

In the US House of Represenatives on June 5, Representatives Cori Bush (MO-01), Ilhan Omar (MN-05), Jesus “Chuy” García (IL-04), Jan Schakowsky (IL-09), and Jamaal Bowman Ed.D. (NY-16) reintroduced a resolution that affirms the rights of the Afro-Indigenous Garífuna people in Honduras. IRTF calls on all US representatives from Ohio to support this resolution. 

Cultural and territorial rights of the Afro-descendant Indigenous Garífuna people along the Atlantic coast of Honduras are under attack.

Starting in 2003, OFRANEH (Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras) began filing several cases with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (based in Washington, DC) and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (based in San Jose, Costa Rica) for their government’s violation of its cultural and territorial rights.  When OFRANEH got their first favorable ruling in 2015, they weren’t exactly hopeful that the administration of the narco-dictator President Juan Orlando Hernández would do anything. But after President Castro, of the left-leaning LIBRE party, took office in January 2022, they did expect advancement of their cause.

A big stumbling block is that the communities that won their cases in the Inter-American Court (2015: Triunfo de la Cruz and Punta Piedra; 2023: San Juan) are fighting private corporations and foreign investors who have a lot at stake. Some have already illegally usurped lands and built tourist resorts. It will be tricky to figure out how to return ancestral lands to the Garífuna people and compensate the companies and investors for their losses. Also at stake is the very security of Garífuna communities. Since Garífuna leaders have become more vocal after the 2015 ruling, the persecution against them has increased—surveillance, intimidation, violence, criminalization.

During the first week of June 2024, a delegation of Garífuna leaders with OFRANEH are visiting US legislators on Capitol Hill to gain support for a US House resolution to affirm the rights of the Garífuna people.

You can read the press release from Rep. Cori Bush who introduced the resolution here.