Honduras: News & Updates

According to payment vouchers for the current melon season for companies of Fyffes in Honduras, they are not paying the minimum wage which was decreed for the agriculture sector in 2020. In April 2020, International Labor Rights Forum, Fair World Project, and the International Union of Food Workers published a report alleging ongoing labour rights violations faced by 6,500 workers on Fyffes’ melon plantations in Honduras since 2016. Abuses detailed in the report include toxic chemical exposure, wage theft, union busting and poor working conditions made more unsafe amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Fyffes is the top importer of melons to the United States, which are sold in major supermarkets across the country. In 2019, Costco and Whole Foods stopped buying Fyffes' Honduran melons due to the ongoing allegations.

Héctor Antonio Trigueros, community and environmental defender from Azacualpa (La Unión, Copán), suffered an attack in which his motorcycle was seriously damaged, while he was unharmed. Hector is one of the main community defenders in Azacualpa, a place where the US-based mining company Aura Minerals has been cyanide-leaching, open-pit mining for years, and where it intends to mine the El Cemeterio hill – local inhabitants are fully opposed to this. Threats, contaminations, explosions, lead poisoning have all resulted. This mining project is supported by President Juan Orlando Hernandez's regime

Michelle Bachelet, High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR), presented her oral update (https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=26806&...) as well as her reports on Colombia, Guatemala, and Honduras. Few countries in the world were as open to international human rights scrutiny as Colombia, which has the largest UNHCHR in Latin America and serious deadly violence against social leaders. Turning to Guatemala, Ms. Bachelet welcomed measures strengthening access to culturally appropriate health care and providing information in accessible formats and in indigenous languages. Her Office continued to observe the erosion of civic space, with increasing attacks and intimidation against human rights defenders, including journalists in the country. Honduras’ human rights challenges included high levels of violence, impunity, discrimination and lack of access to economic, social and cultural rights. The COVID-19 pandemic, and the impact of hurricanes Eta and Iota, had exacerbated the obstacles faced by the most vulnerable people.

The Latin America Working Group (based in Washington, DC) has been monitoring the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on human rights across the region. This blog is focused specifically on the impact of the pandemic on women’s and LGBTQ+ rights. The following are brief summaries that capture the situation for women and members of the LGBTQ+ community since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and to call attention to the lack of support and urgency behind addressing this violence by these governments.

The humanitarian crisis in Honduras found international attention this month as the first and biggest migration caravan since the corona pandemic took off in mid-January. A combination of a pandemic, two hurricanes hitting Honduras in later 2020, an abysmal response by the JOH regime and a lack of perspective among the corruption and human rights violation left again thousands of Honduras without any other option that trying to leave. Congress also showed again how it rather worsens the situation of minorities and vulnerablized groups by changing the constitution to forever ban same-sex marriage and abortions instead of using its power to improve the situation of Honduras. There were also setbacks in the Berta Cáceres case and the Guapinol case. Further corruption cases were undermined, meanwhile Honduras dropped further in an international corruption index. Last but not least, JOH’s drug trafficking links prominently reappeared in the national and international headlines thanks to newly released court documents from New York. Welcome to another month in Honduras.