Voices from Honduras: Human Rights and Accountability
Announcement
Please join the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission for a briefing on the human rights situation in post-election Honduras.
Widespread protests occurred in the aftermath of the disputed November 2017 general elections in Honduras. In response, the Honduran government imposed a state of emergency and curfew, and deployed police and members of the armed forces to remove protesters from the streets. The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights registered 23 people killed during the post-electoral protests, and identified other irregularities that led the Office to express concerns about the use of excessive lethal force. Non-governmental organizations documented additional abuses.
Prior to the elections, there was already widespread alarm about threats and attacks against human rights defenders. The March 2016 assassination of Berta Cáceres, an award-winning indigenous rights and environmental leader, is the most notorious case. But Honduras has the highest number of killings of human rights defenders on a per capita basis in the world. Broad international concern with the ineffectiveness of the judicial system had informed the creation of the Mission to Support the Fight against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras (MACCIH) just two months before Cáceres’ death.
Honduras is encompassed within the U.S. Strategy for Engagement in Central America, and U.S. officials just concluded a bilateral human rights dialogue. This briefing will provide an opportunity to hear from Honduran human rights defenders about the current situation on the ground, and ask what more Congress and the U.S. government should be doing in light of ongoing human rights problems.
This briefing will be open to Members of Congress, congressional staff, the interested public, and the media. For any questions, please contact Kimberly Stanton at 202-225-3599 or Kimberly.Stanton@mail.house.gov(for Rep. McGovern) or Jamie Staley at 202-226-1516 or Jamie.Staley@mail.house.gov (for Rep. Hultgren).
Hosted by:
Member of Congress
Co-Chair, TLHRC
Member of Congress
Co-Chair, TLHRC
Opening Remarks
- Rep. James P. McGovern, Co-Chair, TLHRC
Written remarks
Panelists
- Rev. Ismael Moreno Coto, S.J. (Padre Melo), Jesuit priest in Honduras
Written statement - Karla Rivas, Honduran journalist
Written statement - Ely Castro Rosales, Local Coordinator, Convergence Against Continuance, Honduras
Written statement - Lisa Haugaard, Executive Director, Latin America Working Group
Written statement - Charles Call, Associate Professor, School of International Service, American University and Nonresident Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution
Moderator
- Peter J. Meyer, Specialist in Latin American Affairs, Congressional Research Service
Resources
- UN Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights, Human rights violations in the context of the 2017 elections in Honduras
- UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, Visit to Honduras 29 April - 12 May, End of mission statement
- UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Report on mission to Honduras
- American University Center for Latin American & Latino Studies, The MACCIH Monitor, Issue 4, May 18, 2018
- April 30, 2018 letter to Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan in advance of upcoming human rights dialogue with the Honduran government
- Fact Sheet from the Honduran Ministry of Security