Tag Archives: Honduras
3 May 2014
In a letter to the World Bank, twenty-eight Honduran and international NGOs and civil society groups have expressed their concerns over a proposed USD 15m loan to the commercial bank Davivienda in Honduras by the bank’s private lending branch, the International Finance Corporation (IFC). The proposed investment was classified as ‘medium risk’ by the IFC, even though it was admitted that child labour and land disputes could be potential impacts. (more…)
Source: The Guardian | World Bank loan to Honduran bank comes under scrutiny
28 January 2014
Honduras’ new president Juan Hernandez called the US drug policy a “double standard” and urged US President Barack Obama to recognise the joint effort required to end the region’s drug scourge. “We ask the government of Barack Obama and the U.S. Congress to recognize this shared responsibility … and that we truly work together to solve this problem, which is also their problem,” Hernandez said.
Weak institutions, corruption and gang warfare have made Honduras fertile ground for cartels to expand their operations in Honduras, using the country as a basis for United States-bound cocaine.
According to Hernandez, Central America was suffering as a result of US drug consumption. He said “[i]t strikes us as a double standard that while our people die and bleed, and we’re forced to fight the gangs with our own scarce resources, in North America drugs are just a public health issue … For Honduras and the rest of our Central American brothers it’s a case of life and death.” According to the United Nations, in 2012 Honduras had a murder rate of 85.5 per 100,000 people – the world’s highest.
Source: Swissinfo | New Honduras president takes helm, criticizes U.S. drug policy
13 January 2014
The World Bank ombudsman criticised the International Finance Corporation, which provides loans to companies in developing countries, for failing to follow requirements when it approved a loan to Corporación Dinant, a Honduran palm-oil company, in 2009 and inadequate supervision afterward. Dinant is in violent conflict with farm workers over land tenure of the Bajo Aguán Valley, where Dinant is the largest single landowner. Almost 100 people have been killed since 2009 in Bajo Aguán, according to the country’s human rights commissioner, Ramón Custodio. (more…)
Source: The New York Times | World Bank Is Criticized for Honduran Loan
6 January 2014
Since the end of the Cold War, the promotion of democracy has increasingly come to be considered a matter of legitimate concern for the international community. In light of this, it seems pertinent to ask whether international law offers us a framework for understanding the shared obligations and responsibilities of the international community with respect to the democratic crisis currently taking place in Honduras.
The 2009 military coup in Honduras and its aftermath
It is a common story in the annals of Central and Latin American history. A military coup (reportedly backed by the United States) deposes a democratically elected President whose program of leftist social and economic reform has upset powerful elites. This is what happened in Honduras when, in the early hours of 28 June 2009, then President Manuel Zelaya was dragged from his bed by soldiers and, still in his pyjamas, taken to a nearby air force base and flown into exile. Since being elected in 2006 Zelaya had increased the minimum wage by 80%, introduced free education for all children and embarked upon a program of agrarian reforms, threatening the interests of the economic, political, military and religious oligarchy which had ruled Honduras since independence. (more…)
30 September 2013
María Antonieta Guillen De Bográn, vice-president of Honduras, addressed transnational crime in her speech to the UN General Assembly, noting that ‘effectively combating transnational crime also requires international and regional efforts’, because they are more comprehensive in enforcing the principle of shared but differentiated responsibility between the states that are consumers, and those that are producers of drugs.
Source: General Assembly of the United Nations | General Debate of the 68th Session | Honduras | H.E. Mrs. María Antonieta de Bográn, Vice-President | 27 September 2013
Source: UN News Centre | Senior Honduran official stresses need to scale–up combat against transborder crime