IRTF News

On April 1, PBI-Honduras tweeted: “PBI accompanies ASODEBICOQ [the Association for the Defense of Common Goods of Quimistan] during the official presentation of declarations of Forest Protection Zone over 4 micro-watersheds in Quimistán. We celebrate these declarations and highlight the protection work of the communities as well as the defense work of ASODEBICOQ.”

On March 31, PBI-Colombia tweeted: “@Ccajar, on behalf of Afrowilches, and other human rights organizations file tutelage against #fracking pilots in #PuertoWilches for lack of prior consultation with Afro-Colombian communities who, in the midst of threats, protect their #ancestral territory, water and ecosystem.” Their tweet helped to amplify this statement from the PBI-Colombia accompanied José Alvear Restrepo Lawyers’ Collective (CCAJAR) that notes: “Human rights organizations together with the Colombia Free of Fracking Alliance, filed before a Circuit Court a charge against the Ministry of the Interior, the ANLA [National Environmental Licensing Authority] and Ecopetrol, for the violation of the right to prior, free and informed consultation of the Afro-Colombian Corporation of Puerto Wilches – Afrowilches.”

The Observatory for Justice for the Guapinol River Defenders urged the State of Honduras to compensate the damages caused, investigate and punish those responsible for the events and offer immediate physical and psychological protection measures to the defenders and their environment. In February 2021, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention made public its resolution that the "preventive" detention of the eight defenders was illegal and called for their immediate release; as well as an exhaustive and independent investigation of the judges and prosecutors who promoted the trial. However, the State of Honduras did not take any measures to put an end to and redress their unjust deprivation of liberty. It was not until February 24 2022 that all eight environmental defenders had been released.

The United Nations’ Security Council will not allow social leaders to contradict President Ivan Duque on Colombia’s peace process. The Security Council will meet in New York on Tuesday for its quarterly session on the implementation of a 2016 peace deal with now-defunct guerrilla group FARC. These sessions have always been attended by Colombia’s foreign minister to represent the State and a social leader to represent civil society. This time, only Duque will address the UN ambassadors.

U.S. human rights, faith, labor, environmental, and grassroots organizations sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken regarding their deep concern with the human rights and humanitarian situation in Colombia. We believe the Biden Administration should take firmer action to fully protect and implement the accords, particularly with respect to the rights of Colombia’s ethnic minorities, police brutality, and the right to peaceful protest. The letter outlines a series of actions the State Department can take to ensure coordinated diplomacy for forward momentum on peace accord implementation, human rights, and racial justice. This includes pressing for protection of human rights defenders and for full implementation of the accords’ comprehensive rural reforms, Ethnic Chapter, and gender provisions. The letter also urges the State Department to take a much stronger stance regarding police brutality and human rights abuses by Colombia’s military.  The Biden Administration must immediately mobilize a range of government agencies to rescue Colombia’s long sought-after and waning peace.

The mining conflict in Azacualpa has shown the implications of mining activity in the territories of Honduras, under a state policy that promotes extractivism in an excessive manner and that, apart from environmental damage, has resulted in the exile of entire communities. This mining company generated the displacement of three villages in the municipality: San Andrés Minas, San Miguel and Azacualpa. In the case of San Andres, the mining company negotiated with the municipal and central government the total relocation of the community. While, in the case of San Miguel and Azacualpa, the displacement was partial. The current conflict in Azacualpa is a socio-political and environmental conflict motivated by the actions of the MINOSA mining company that, in its eagerness to extract and exploit the commons, has destroyed the biodiversity and ecosystems of the area and (if that were not enough) has dispossessed families of the cemeteries where their relatives have been buried for more than two hundred years.

You’ve probably seen the terrifying headlines about the suspension of constitutional rights in El Salvador, the mass roundups of over 6,000 people now being held without charges and with no right to defense, President Bukele’s threats to deny prisoners food and other basic rights, and his accusations that any critic is a gang sympathizer. We at CISPES wanted to share a new round-up we put together of analysis from social movement organizations, human rights leaders, and journalists in El Salvador who are courageously speaking out against state repression and threats to democracy.

For the second time in three years, El Salvador is back under martial law. The state of exception was approved so swiftly that lawmakers failed to remove references to public health and economic reopening in the text, clearly copied and pasted from the decrees that governed the country’s notoriously militarized 2020 pandemic lockdown. This latest suspension of constitutional guarantees, however, was enacted as part of right-wing populist president Nayib Bukele’s newly declared “war on gangs.” Still reeling from the pandemic, working-class Salvadorans now find themselves caught between predatory street gangs and an unaccountable authoritarian state.