Efforts to establish an anti-impunity body in Honduras are slowly advancing more than one year after President Xiomara Castro first promised to combat corruption. On July 9, experts from the United Nations arrived in Honduras to assess the viability of the organization, which has become known as the International Commission Against Impunity in Honduras, or CICIH.
While the negotiations advance, the process has been plagued by delays due to required reforms to national law and the need to create independent judicial bodies.
Simon Liu / Office of the President, CC BY 2.0
Honduran President Xiomara Castro at her presidential inauguration, January 2022.
“We understand that a negotiation of this type takes time,” Ana María Méndez Dardón, Central American director for the Washington Office on Latin America, tells The Progressive. “But we believe that there have been unnecessary delays that call into question if there is a [political] will for this to move forward.”
Despite these delays, the Honduran government has taken steps to repeal and reform legislation that shielded corrupt officials.
On July 13, the Honduran congress repealed Decree 57-2020, which had prevented the Public Prosecutor’s office from confiscating and seizing documents from people accused of acts of corruption, and reformed Decree 93-2021, which shielded corrupt officials through bank secrecy legislation. Yet the congress must still repeal Decree 116-2019, which was approved in 2019 by the conservative National Party. This was known as the “impunity pact” and it shielded deputies from being investigated for the embezzlement of public funds.
Honduras also must elect a new Attorney General who will uphold the independence of the office.
The international community has expressed support for the creation of CICIH. Laura Dogu, the United States ambassador to Honduras, stated, following the recent visit by United Nations representatives to the Central American country, that the United States is fully behind the formation of the anti-corruption body. The statement came after she met with Honduran congressional representative Fátima Mena of the Savior of Honduras Party.
The formation of a CICIH is based on the similar United Nations-backed International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala, commonly known as CICIG.
Corruption is endemic in Honduras, as it also is in neighboring Guatemala and El Salvador. But corruption is only maintained through the systematic problem of impunity in these countries, which also contributes to the power of drug-trafficking networks. “Honduras has a long tradition of corruption and the spread of illicit networks within its institutional framework,” Méndez Dardón says.
“Xiomara Castro has had the task of confronting strong structures [of corruption and impunity] that have existed within different institutions. It is a difficult task,” she adds.
Honduran civil society has advocated strongly for the creation of CICIH.
But organizations like the Honduran Centro de Estudio para la Democracia (CESPAD) were forced to cancel a July 18 rally demanding progress on CICIH. The decision came after Castro and the ruling Libre party announced a mobilization by party members for the same day.
“Unfortunately, with the government’s call [for mobilizations], this march has been politicized by partisans,” Gustavo Irías, the director of CESPAD, told the Spanish wire service EFE on July 17.
The move to call a party rally for the same day as the activists’ demonstration is concerning as it plays into the polarization of the country and affects the role of civil society,” Méndez Dardón explains. “It is worrying because the work of civil society is being stigmatized,” she says. “The right to demonstrate is clearly a human right, and this type of public call made by the president can be seen as a call for confrontation.”
Even as the Castro administration slowly advances with the formation of an independent anti-impunity body, the country has also launched a crackdown on the country’s prison system. The move, which was announced on June 27, is similar to actions carried out in 2021 in neighboring El Salvador by the administration of President Nayib Bukele.
The militarization of the prisons in Honduras comes after forty-six female inmates in the country’s only women’s prison were massacred by gang members on June 20. The massacre was allegedly carried out by members of the Barrio 18 gang, also inmates, who used guns, machetes, and flammable liquids that were illegally smuggled into the prison.
The crackdown and the massacre come as Honduras has continued to carry out a low intensity war against gangs through the declaration of states of emergencies. Human rights observers, however, have expressed concerns about these actions, similar to those occurring in El Salvador.
“Militarizing prisons and expanding the state of exception is not the way. Honduras needs a security policy that protects the Honduran people and respects human rights,” Juanita Goebertus, director of the Americas Division at Human Rights Watch, tweeted in June.