IRTF News

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) released its 2021 Annual Report, a reference instrument to foster institutional transparency. The Report addresses the situation of human rights and presents relevant progress made in the Americas, along with pending challenges. Each one of the Report's six chapters mentions specific institutional achievements. The IACHR granted 73 new precautionary measures, extended a further 33, and requested five temporary measures from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. The Commission further issued four resolutions to follow up on precautionary measures, given persistent risk factors or the emergence of implementation challenges. A total of 40 precautionary measures were lifted, in the belief that the risk factors that justified their existence had disappeared. During 2021, all requests for precautionary measures received by 2019 that were pending a final decision were reviewed. 

Zones of Economic Development and Employment (ZEDEs) in Honduras are an extreme form of neoliberalism. Recently ZEDE Próspera announced it will seek consultations under CAFTA for lost investments after the Honduran Congress overturned the ZEDE law earlier this year. This interview with Fernando García, the Honduran Presidential Commissioner Against ZEDEs gives some context and refers to ZEDE Próspera’s recent announcements. 

A petition for a criminal probe against the Dutch state-run development bank FMO has been filed in the Netherlands for alleged complicity in bloodshed in Honduras. FMO, the acronym for the Netherlands Development Finance Company, had been involved in financing the controversial Agua Zarca dam project in northwest Honduras from 2014 to 2017. The project, slated for construction in Indigenous Lenca territory, drew international scrutiny after several murders surrounding the project, including the 2016 assassination of world-renowned Indigenous water defender Berta Cáceres. Cáceres had led the resistance to the dam, which many Indigenous people said would displace them from the Gualcarque river, regarded as sacred. She was later killed by a hit squad whose members had connections to both the Honduran military as well as DESA, the dam-building company receiving loan money from FMO. “For the Lenca people this new legal action is the opportunity to reveal the criminal activity inherent to the financing of the Agua Zarca,” Berta's daughter Bertha Zúñiga Cáceres told Al Jazeera. It is also a way, she said, “to know that my mother wasn’t mistaken in establishing that these businesses and these banks are criminals”.

The U.N. human rights office on Saturday expressed concern about rising violence around Haiti’s capital, saying 99 people have been reported killed in recent fighting between rival gangs in the Cite Soleil district alone. The warning came hours after the U.N. Security Council unanimously approved a resolution renewing the mandate of a U.N. office in the troubled Caribbean nation and calling on all countries to stop the transfer of small arms, light weapons and ammunition to anyone there supporting gang violence and criminal activity. “We have so far documented, from January to the end of June, 934 killings, 684 injuries and 680 kidnappings across the capital,” he said Saturday. In addition, “Over a five-day period, from 8-12 July, at least 234 more people were killed or injured in gang-related violence in the Cite Soleil area of the city.”

So far in 2022, at least 101 people have been killed, according to the Institute for Development and Peace Studies (Indepaz). Indepaz says 1,328 social leaders – a term used to describe political activists, community representatives and rights defenders – have been killed since the 2016 peace agreement between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebel group. “Social leaders tend to be the people who stand up for their communities, so they put themselves in a very difficult situation because of their leadership,” Sergio Guzman, a political analyst and director of the Colombia Risk Analysis consultancy group, told Al Jazeera. “They are targeted by illegal organisations [in order] to assert their total control, instil fear in the population and subdue them.”

For over three months Governor Abbott of Texas has been busing migrants from the southern border to Washington, DC as part of a cruel and racist publicity stunt. Since this began on April 13th, 2022, Texas has sent ~120 buses carrying around three thousand people, including children and infants. Two months ago, Governor Ducey joined Abbott and began busing people from Arizona as well. In response, DC, Maryland, and Virginia (DMV) community members, part of the migrant solidarity mutual aid network, have been showing up for migrants—receiving the buses at all times of day, sorting donations, finding housing, and spending over $260,000 of grassroots raised money to support them while the DC and federal governments do nothing. On July 12th, the organizers took their second day off in three months to 1) rest and recover after many months of mental and physical exhaustion, 2) quarantine after a significant portion of the volunteers were exposed to COVID-19 over the weekend, and 3) protest the unsustainable conditions created by the lack of government response.

The Supreme Court last week rejected a challenge to President Joe Biden’s effort to stop the previous administration’s “Remain in Mexico” program, which forced many asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for hearings before U.S. immigration judges. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Sunday said that the current policy will continue for the next few weeks. Mayorkas said the “Remain in Mexico” program “has endemic flaws and causes unjustifiable human tragedy.” In the meantime, migrants will continue to go through immigration enforcement proceedings.

For several months now, President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador has pursued a campaign of mass arrests. Under his recently extended state of emergency, police have arrested more than 43,000 people on suspicion of membership in the gangs MS-13 and Barrio 18, which the government classifies as terrorist groups. Grounds for arrest include having tattoos, living in neighborhoods with gang presence or simply “looking like criminals.” Amnesty International has reported on human rights abuses, including indefinite pretrial detention, trials in absentia and lifting sentencing restrictions on minors as young as 12. At least 59 people have died in custody, according to the Salvadoran human rights group Cristosal.

We, the undersigned 87 organizations committed to human rights, migrant, and refugee rights, are writing ahead of your bilateral meeting at the White House to urge you to center your discussion of migration on human rights, protection, and expansion of legal pathways. While migration across the hemisphere poses challenges, the United States and Mexico can and should be leaders in the protection of migrants and refugees and make reality the rightsrespecting commitments in the four pillars of the recently signed Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection. In the face of these tragedies, our organizations remain gravely concerned that, despite the stated commitments of your administrations, including those made in the recent Los Angeles Declaration, to promote regular pathways for migration, access to international protection, and humane migration management, the United States and Mexico are instead continuing ineffective and unlawful deterrence-based policies and practices that disregard and subvert international refugee and human rights law and endanger migrants and asylum seekers.