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México y Haití figuran entre los países que han tenido menos éxito en el proceso de solicitud de asilo en Estados Unidos en las últimas dos décadas, informó este martes el centro Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), de la Universidad de Syracuse, en Nueva York. De acuerdo con el informe de TRAC, las cinco nacionalidades con las tasas de obtención de asilo más bajas en las cortes de inmigración son México (15 %), Honduras y Haití (18 % cada uno), Guatemala (19 %) y El Salvador (20 %). Indica además que en conjunto, las personas de Honduras, Guatemala y El Salvador son el segmento más grande de solicitantes de asilo en los últimos años.
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Thalía, Amelian y Lucía son mujeres de distintas realidades, pero se enfrentan a la discriminación y falta de oportunidades tanto laborales como integrales. Ellas luchan día a día por la subsistencia. Mientras tanto, el Estado de Honduras ignora las sentencias de la Corte Interamericana de los Derechos Humanos que mandan el reconocimiento de la ley de identidad de género para permitir a las personas trans adecuar sus datos de identidad, algo determinante para mejorar su calidad de vida. “¿Realmente quién es el protagonista de todos los daños que nos hacen a la comunidad de mujeres trans?”, pregunta Thalía. “Es el mismo Estado”, se contesta. “Quien dice que vela y protege es el que nos mata, el que nos lastima”....Las mujeres trans sufren violencia en muchos de los ámbitos donde se desempeñan. Según el estudio del Centro de Documentación y Situación Trans de América Latina y El Caribe (CeDosTALC), las víctimas trans de vulneraciones de derechos humanos en Honduras son en su mayoría trabajadoras sexuales, el 42% del total. El 34% son trabajadoras formales, el 5% son activistas y el 7% trabajadoras informales.
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After reaching a deal with Mexico, the US will by 6 December start returning asylum seekers from other Latin American countries to Mexico, where they will be obliged to wait while their case is assessed. Mexico said US officials met its concerns over funding for migrant shelters, protection for vulnerable groups and access to medical checkups and Covid-19 vaccines. It also promised to take “local safety conditions” into account before accepting asylum seekers – a pledge that provoked disquiet among migrant advocates. But advocates argue that the main shortcomings of the programme are unchanged. “The violence faced by migrants in Mexico is going to outweigh any sort of promise made by the Mexican government to try to make this better,” said Linda Rivas, executive director of Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center in El Paso, Texas. “There aren’t enough shelters. People are continuing to be kidnapped – sometimes in their own shelter … Mexico can try [to protect migrants] but the reality is Mexico doesn’t have the means of doing it.”
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On November 28, the Honduran people cast their vote in overwhelming numbers for a future in which Hondurans aren’t forced to flee their own country, forcefully repudiating the corrupt administration of current President Juan Orlando Hernández, a man who wrought unimaginable destruction on his people for eight years. Now the big question is how the United States will respond to the policies of the new president. Xiomara Castro, a democratic socialist, unseated a right-wing machinery that has been backed by Washington since the 2009 coup that deposed her husband, Manuel Zelaya....Castro’s control over Honduras’s democratic institutions could be threatened by its terrifying military and police forces. They’re loyal to Hernández, tight with drug traffickers, long practiced at repressing dissent and capable of anything. Hondurans are rightly worried about a new coup or more complex disruption and violence involving provocateurs, paramilitaries, drug traffickers and gangs. Despite all of this, the United States has continued to fund, train and share intelligence with the Honduran military and police, in the face of powerful congressional opposition. What message is President Biden sending to the Honduran military and police now?
News Article

Mass incarceration in the United States is a crime against humanity. It disproportionately ruins the lives of Black, Brown and Indigenous people. It wastes human potential. It destabilizes neighborhoods and destroys communities. We all pay dearly for it, in human as well as economic terms. Both at its roots and in its practices and policies, mass incarceration as practiced by the United States is an egregious abuse of human rights. If you are Black, Brown or Indigenous in the U.S., jail and prison are traps targeted at you and waiting to spring shut. You have a high likelihood of being incarcerated. Race and class play a critical role in who is arrested, who is tried and convicted, who receives the harshest sentences – and who is able to successfully navigate the challenges of post-incarceration life. Black men are six times as likely to be incarcerated as white men, and Latinx people are 2.5 times as likely. For Black men in their thirties, about 1 in every 12 is in prison or jail on any given day. In 2019, the imprisonment rate for African American women (83 per 100,000) was over 1.7 times the rate of imprisonment for white women (48 per 100,000). Latinx women were imprisoned at 1.3 times the rate of white women (63 vs. 48 per 100,000).

News Article

There is little respite to the human rights crisis impacting communities across Colombia. November was another very violent month. According to national human rights groups, by the end of November at least 43 former FARC guerrillas and 159 social activists had been killed since the start of 2021. Here is Justice for Colombia’s monthly update on cases of human rights abuses in the country.

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Communities affected by mining continue to denounce mining activities that have led to pollution, constant surveillance and a state of terror in the community for those who oppose its implementation without consultation. The trial of the Guapinol 8 is expected to be a turning point for those defending their water and land in Honduras in the face of extractive projects resoundingly rejected by the population.
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The 2016 peace accord, negotiated in Cuba with support from the U.S. under former President Barack Obama, resulted in President Santos’ winning the Nobel Peace Prize. After the deal was signed, FARC members began to demobilize, and 13,000 laid down their weapons. On the fifth anniversary of that peace deal, the Biden Administration will remove the FARC from the terrorist list. But it is adding two new groups that have splintered off from the FARC: La Segunda Marquetalia and the FARC-EP. (The United States also designated the leaders of those organizations - Luciano Marin Arango, Hernan Dario Velasquez Saldarriaga, Henry Castellanos Garzon, Nestor Gregorio Vera Fernandez, Miguel Santanilla Botache, and Euclides Espana Caicedo - as specially designated global terrorists.) Juan S. Gonzalez, the senior director for Western Hemisphere affairs at the National Security Council, said removing the FARC from the terrorism list would allow the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to work in areas where demobilized FARC soldiers are. It would also allow former rebels to travel to the U.S.

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