CIVICUS speaks with Christopher Castillo, General Coordinator of Alternative for Community and Environmental Vindication of Honduras (Alternativa de Reivindicación Comunitaria y Ambientalista de Honduras, ARCAH), about progress made and pending issues after two years of Xiomara Castro’s presidency.
ARCAH is a community social movement that defends territories and common goods against projects that threatens peace and the wellbeing of communities, from an anti-capitalist, anti-racist, anti-patriarchal, anti-colonialist and anti-classist perspective.
To what extent has Xiomara Castro’s government, as it nears its second anniversary, lived up to expectations?
The greatest expectation of Hondurans was to put an end to an authoritarian government. The key focus of Castro’s campaign was therefore to dismantle the authoritarian state and a series of associated issues, particularly corruption, influence peddling and the capture of institutions by drug traffickers and organised crime. That goal has been partly achieved: we seem to no longer live under arbitrary power, although we continue to coexist with deep-rooted corruption and high levels of crime, insecurity and violence.
Another issue of great concern to grassroots activists are what are called ZEDEs – employment and economic development zones. In April 2022, when reporting on her first 100 days in office, President Castro proudly declared that national sovereignty was being restored, emphasising that her government had repealed the law that established these areas and provided special conditions to attract investment. However, her repeal decree had not yet been ratified by Congress. The removal of conditions for the continuation of extractive processes was still pending, and to a large extent this has remained unchanged.
The new government also promised to halt water privatisation. However, so far there are 81 Honduran municipalities where water has been privatised, and the government has continued to strengthen service providers that take the function away from public companies, particularly in Comayagüela and Tegucigalpa, the two cities that make up the Central District.
In sum, citizens’ expectations have been met in terms of overcoming the more authoritarian and repressive features of the state, but not regarding extractivist and privatisation policies, which have not yet seen significant changes.
Has the situation of human rights defenders improved?
To the extent that their struggles are linked to resistance against extractivism and privatisation, the situation of human rights defenders has not improved. We have experienced reprisals for our work, which have included death threats, kidnapping attempts and criminalisation processes. In 2023, ARCAH counted 125 attacks against the organisation and its members. In August, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights granted precautionary measures in favour of 11 ARCAH members, but more than five months have passed and the government has yet to implement anything in response to these precautionary measures.
Many activists seeking assistance from state protection mechanisms are being ignored or have their petitions systematically obstructed, even when they provide evidence that they are experiencing attacks and their lives are in danger.
According to the latest report by the Human Rights Secretariat, 54 cases are currently being processed, more than 100 are in the queue and only eight have measures in place. The excuse given to justify this poor performance is its limited budget, which currently stands at 32 million lempiras (approx. US$1.3 million). There are government officials who have larger budgets for foreign travel and business. Human rights should be more than just talk. They should be reflected in practice.
What’s the current state of public opinion?
A survey published by the Jesuit Reflection, Research and Communication Team (ERIC-SJ) in early 2023 showed that after one year in office Castro’s popularity had dropped by 20 percentage points. It also showed that for the majority of Hondurans the most urgent issues to tackle were the economic crisis and unemployment. Honduras is the second-poorest country in Latin America, despite a six per cent growth rate, one of the region’s highest.
According to the ERIC-SJ survey, the third most important problem, close behind economic issues, was crime and insecurity. A very large majority also perceived that murders had increased. Regarding corruption and justice delivery, however, the majority thought the situation had remained unchanged, although the new International Mission against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras received high levels of support.
What should Castro’s priorities be for the second half of her term?
The main public policy priorities in Honduras continue to be education, health and the environment – in addition to the situation of excluded groups, including Indigenous peoples, women, LGBTQI+ people and peasants. Much of this exclusion is linked to the problem of extractivism, which accounts for high levels of violence against environmental activists, and almost total impunity for these attacks.
The situation of education and its link to employment is dramatic. Many people no longer want to send their children to school, because even if they graduate they still can’t get a job. It’s more profitable to bring them into the informal market to work as vendors. This has resulted in increasing numbers of school dropouts.
Change in this area must focus not only on increasing school enrolment and retention but also on providing quality education. Public education must be made attractive again to the middle and upper-middle classes to reverse the privatisation and segmentation of education.
The issue of health goes beyond hospital services to include the quality of food and consumption habits. Honduras has very high levels of malnutrition not just because of limited access to food but also because the quality of food has decreased. This is partly due to the fact that the best-quality products, such as bananas, are destined for export, and only the worst-quality products are left for domestic consumption.
Finally, the issue of extractivism should be prioritised. Announcements made about this have not yet been fulfilled. For instance, the Ministry of the Environment has issued statements on the prohibition of open-pit mining but no decree has been issued to formally prohibit this practice and the 20 existing concessions continue to operate.
There are 2,100 extractive projects underway in Honduras, of which 300 are hydroelectric dams and 900 are mining projects. Overall, 33 per cent of national territory has been handed over in concessions to transnational corporations that are developing extractive projects. ZEDEs, meanwhile, occupy 67 per cent of national territory, including all of the coast.
In 2023, 12 human rights defenders were killed. Last year Honduras was the country with the most murders of environmental activists per capita in the world, and the fourth in absolute terms. This problem has not abated with the change of government. It should be a priority to tackle this continuing violence and impunity.
Civic space in Honduras is rated ‘repressed’ by the CIVICUS Monitor.
Get in touch with ARCAH through its Facebook account and follow @Arcah_hn on Twitter.
