"Honduras: Release Guapinol defenders and honour pledges made to UN – human rights experts", 19 November 2021

UN human rights experts* today urged Honduras, elected to the Human Rights Council last month, to release eight environmental defenders in line with recommendations made by another UN body.

"As a new member of the UN Human Rights Council, Honduras should be redoubling efforts to clean up its human rights record, and an obvious first step is to release the Guapinol defenders," said Mary Lawlor, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders.

The defenders were placed in pre-trial detention two years ago for opposing an iron oxide mine inside a protected national park in Tocoa, a municipality in the country's northern Colón department...

They belong to the Municipal Committee for the Defence of Common and Public Goods (CMDBPC), a network of local groups dedicated to land and environmental defence...

However, a Honduran court in August extended their preventive detention; they are to go on trial on 1 December 2021.

The Working Group on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises raised concerns on this specific case following its visit to Honduras in 2019. It recommended that the government of Honduras take immediate measures to protect the life and integrity of human rights defenders working to protect the rights of communities, their land or the environment in the context of development projects. It also called for prompt and impartial investigations of cases involving threats and violence against them...

When the General Assembly elected Honduras to the Human Rights Council for the first time in its history last month, the country made a number of pledges to strengthen international human rights mechanisms and compliance with global human rights instruments...