Honduras: News & Updates

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.”

The hardline approach to violence, a model used by President Nayib Bukele in El Salvador, is gaining increasing support in Central America, a region that has been historically plagued by insecurity, whether related to gangs or drug trafficking.

Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Honduras are three countries that have adopted measures similar to those implemented by the Salvadoran leader, despite the criticism he receives from human rights organizations.

The article examines Honduras’s fragile political transition after a narrowly contested and widely questioned election, assessing the mixed legacy of the recent president (Castro), the deep crisis of the electoral system, and the enduring power of corruption and impunity. It analyzes the fragmented National Congress, the human rights risks tied to a private sector-driven economic agenda, and the renewed alignment with the United States under Trump, warning that without structural reforms and accountability, governance will rely on transactional politics rather than democratic legitimacy—_at high cost to civic space, Indigenous and Garifuna communities, and long-term stability.

Admist media attention being drawn to trumps "war on drugs" and his interference in Venezuela, a regime change operation in Honduras and the pardoning of its former president --a  convicted criminal, drug trafficker--is overshadowed. This article gives insight on how the elections went (November 30 2025) and which parties were involved with not only influencing elections but the broader political landscape in Honduras.

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.

Due to the dramatic and chaotic ending to the recent presidential election in Honduras, the international human rights organization Global Exchange and the Center for the Study of Democracy wrote a report stating that Honduras is navigating the collision of corporate lawsuits, historical corruption, and the urgent struggle for democracy.

The report concludes that Honduras is trapped between the desire to reform and a pushback from international capital and domestic elites. To break this “siege,” Global Exchange recommends that Honduras withdraw from international arbitration treaties that prioritize profits over human rights; abolish ZEDEs to restore full national sovereignty; establish an independent mechanism to protect human rights defenders; and prosecute those responsible for the murders of activists, and urges the international community, especially the U.S., to respect Honduran sovereignty and allow fair elections.

Global Exchange’s report serves as both a warning and a call to action to stand with the Honduran people in their struggle for democracy and dignity.

This article by CovertAction Magazine provides an elaborate overview of Honduras' recent electoral history, its many struggles with this very crucial democratic procedure and the very recent electoral disaster. 

This article from NACLA provides insight on the Trump administration's contradictory polices. Occurrences such as the bombing of fisherboats in the Caribbean are contrasted with the pardon for fomer president Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was convicted in US federal court for trafficking tons of drugs into the US.  

Juan Orlando Hernández, former President of Honduras who last year was sentenced to 45 years in prison for flooding the United States with cocaine was recently pardoned by President Trump. A new article by the New Yok Times illuminates how this political act is in reluctance with the administrations “fight against drugs” and how Donald Trump's longest-serving political adviser and lobbyist Roger Stone has played into this.