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Honduras

, ECLAC: At least 2,795 were victims of femicide in 23 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean in 2017, Gender Equality Observatory for Latin America and the Caribbean, 2017

Stressing the need to create inter-agency agreements, the 2017 Economic Commission for the Latin America and the Caribbean’s report on femicide shows that Brazil topped the list of femicides (with 1,133 victims confirmed in 2017). In 2016, Honduras recorded 5.8 femicides for every 100,000 women. In Guatemala, the Dominican Republic and Bolivia, high rates were also seen in 2017, equal to or above 2 cases for every 100,000 women. In the region, only Panama, Peru and Venezuela have rates below 1.0. In the Caribbean, four countries accounted for a total of 35 femicide victims in 2017: Belize (9 victims), the British Virgin Islands (1), Saint Lucia (4) and Trinidad and Tobago (21). In the same year, Guyana and Jamaica — which only have data on intimate femicides — reported the deaths of 34 and 15 women, respectively, at the hands of their current or former partners. In 2017, the rates of intimate femicides in Latin America ranged between a maximum of 1.98 for every 100,000 women in the Dominican Republic, to a minimum of 0.47 in Chile.

, UN: ‘Machismo’ in Honduras driving epidemic of femicides, TeleSur, 2018

Provides recent data uncovered by the United Nations on femicide in Honduras. It also connects the occurrence of femicide, and the lack of effective measures to tackle it, to political and economic instability, which lead many people to flee the country.

To see the consequences of femicide in terms of the children made orphans in Honduras, have a look at this link https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Thousands-of-Children-Orphaned-in-Honduras-By-Femicides-Study-20180912-0010.html

, Across Latin America, women fight back against violence in politics, UN Women, 2018

Reports on how women in Bolivia, Brazil, Honduras and Mexico who are willing to hold public offices experience violence and do react against intimidation.

Relevant document on political violence against women for each of these countries can be found below.

International: INCLUDE PDF; http://archive.ipu.org/wmn-e/classif.htm

Bolivia: http://observatorioparidaddemocratica.oep.org.bo/ (Spanish). For further readings, please see http://www.unwomen.org/en/news/stories/2018/11/take-five-katia-uriona

Brazil: http://www.brasil5050.org.br/ (Portuguese)

Mexico: https://www.gob.mx/conavim/documentos/protocolo-para-la-atencion-de-la-violencia-contra-las-mujeres-en-razon-de-genero-2017; http://mexico.unwomen.org/es/digiteca/publicaciones/2017/10/protocolo-oaxaca

, Capacity4dev, Spotlight Initiative: countering violence against women in Central America, Europa.eu, 2018

Highlights the initiatives undertaken by the EU and the UN in Guatemala and Mexico to tackle violence against women and girls. Other Latin American countries that are part of the project are El Salvador, Argentina and Honduras. 

, Honduran President called ‘murderer’ at inauguration of UN anti-femicide initiative, TeleSur, 2019

Announces the launch of the ‘Spotlight Initiative’ in Honduras through a joint collaboration between the United Nations (UN) and the European Union (EU) and the Honduras government to end femicide and impunity. By 2014, Honduras had the highest number of femicides in the world, according to the U.N. It is reported that 380 women were murdered in the country in 2018 and that 30 women were killed during the first 30 days of 2019. The impunity rate for this crime hovers at 95 per cent.

Boerman, Thomas ; Knapp, Jennifer, Gang Culture and Violence Against Women in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, Immigration Briefings, no. 17-03, 2017, pp. 1-16

Frank, Dana, The Long Honduran Night: Resistance, Terror and the United States in the Aftermath of the Coup, Chicago, IL, Haymarket Books, 2018, pp. 344 pb

The immediate popular resistance to the military coup in 2009, that ousted the democratically elected President Manuel Zelava, did not defeat the coup, but a sustained and impressive movement continued under the National Front for Popular Resistance, which brought together trade unions, church leaders, academics and teachers and others, despite violent repression by the military and police. Frank also examines the role of  the US government in supporting the coup and  describes the support offered to the resisters by the US organization she founded.

See also: Main, Alexander, 'Honduras: The Deep Roots of Resistance', Dissent, Spring 2014,

https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/honduras-the-deep-roots-of-resistance

Focuses particularly on role of the National Front of Popular Resistance in creating in 2011 a new political party Liberty and Refoundation with the aim of winning power and creating a new constitution.  Main sets this development in the context of socialist parties winning power through elections in other Latin American countries.

See also: Portillo, Suyapa, ''Honduran Social Movements: Then and Now', Oxford Research Encylopedia of Politics, 28 September 2020.

https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9781190228637.013.1774

Examines historic bases of social movements: political parties, both moderate and radical unionism and land struggles, the reaction against neoliberal economic policies of the 1990s  undermining earlier economic and political gains. The article concludes by assessing the remarkable mobilization against the 2009 coup by almost all sections of society, including feminists, Black and indigenous groups.

Freidenberg, Flavia, Women's Political Representation in Honduras: A Comparative Perspective on Party Resistance and Inclusive Reform Proposals, Atlanta, GA, The Carter Centre, 2019, pp. 20

Report monitoring the political participation of women in Honduras, and investigating the causes and implications of women’s absence from institutions and public decision-making processes.

Galindo, Jimena ; Gaytan, Victoria, Latin America and the Caribbean’s grievous femicide case, Global Americans, 2019

Highlights the evidence that in 32 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean at least 3,529 women were victims of femicide in 2018. According to the report by ECLAC, the five countries with the highest rates of femicide in Latin America are: El Salvador (6.8 femicides per 100,000 women), Honduras (5.1), Bolivia (2.3), Guatemala (2.0) and the Dominican Republic (1.9). In the Caribbean, Guyana leads with 8.8 femicides per 100,000 women, followed by Saint Lucia (4.4), Trinidad and Tobago (3.4), Barbados (3.4), and Belize (2.6).

Garcia, Isabel, Violence Against Women In Politics: Research On Political Parties In Honduras, Washington, D.C., National Democratic Institute (NDI), 2017, pp. 52

This report focuses on “all forms of aggression, coercion and intimidation against women as political actors simply because they are women. These acts – whether directed at women as civic leader, voters, political party members, candidates, elected representatives or appointed officials – are designed to restrict the political participation of women as a group. This violence reinforces traditional stereotypes and roles given to women, using domination and control to exclude women from politics”, as defined by the NDI.

Hall, Derek, Land, Cambridge, Polity, 2012, pp. 176

Analyzes conflicts over land in terms of its role as territory (leading to inter-state claims or wars), its status as property, and ways in which its use is regulated. The book examines the attempts of NGOs to protect property rights and environments in the Global South and the land grabs by corporations and governments, drawing on wide range of examples, including China and Honduras.

Kerssen, Tanya, Grabbing Power: The New Struggles for Land, Food and Democracy in Northern Honduras, ed. Journal of Peasant Studies, , Oakland CA, Food First Books, 2013, pp. 188

This book covers the popular resistance that has developed in the towns since the coup in 2009, but especially in the Bajo Aguan valley, where peasants who are contesting their dispossession from their land since 1992 by the Dinant Corporation and other large landowners promoting palm oil plantations, are staging large scale occupations of land. The area has a large military presence and special forces are implicated in killing local activists.

Lakhani, Nina, Who Killed Berta Caceres? Dams, Death Squads and an Indigenous Defender's Battle for the Planet, London, Verso, 2020, pp. 336 pb

Journalist Nina Lakhani draws on numerous interviews, including with Caceras herself, legal files and corporate records to recount the years of environmental protest by this indigenous Honduran activist, who received the Goldman Prize in 2015 for her successful campaign to halt the hydroelectric dam being built on a river sacred to her people, and was assassinated in 2016. She had been under threat for years, and many colleagues had been killed or forced into exile. Lakhani attended the trial of Caceres' killers in 2018, when employees of the dam Company and state security were implicated in the murder by hired gunmen. But the trial failed to reveal who had ordered and paid for the assassination.

McSheffrev, Elizabeth, Honduran women pay for rights with their lives, National Observer, 2018

This interactive long report explores the killing of Berta Cáceres, environmentalist and recipient of the Goldman Environmental Prize, and contextaulises it within the emergence of a cohesive feminist movement in Honduras. It also reports the statistics on violence against women in the country, and initiatives to tackle it.

Menjívar, Cecilia ; Walsh, Shannon, The Architecture of Feminicide: The State, Inequalities, and Everyday Gender Violence in Honduras, Latin American Research Review, Vol. 52, no. 2, 2017, pp. 221-240

The authors examine the role of the state in relation to the growing risk of violence against women at home and on the streets. They argue that, especially since the 2009 coup, increasing political repression, pervasive violence and the loss of power by civil society groups promote extreme violence against women. They also argue that there is a growing gap between the laws officially protecting women (passed to appease international or internal pressure) and the actual implementation of those laws.

Schlabach, Gerald, The nonviolence of desperation: Peasant land action in Honduras, ed. Rosset, Peter M., Patel, Roy, Courville, Michael, In McManus; Schlabach, Relentless Persistence: Nonviolent Action in Latin America (E. IV.1. General and Comparative Studies), Philadelphia PA, New Society Publishers, pp. 48-62

Examines 200 peasant occupations in 1972 (assertion of a tradition of ‘les recuparaciones’) in context of developing forms of protest since the ‘great strike’ against United Fruit Company in 1954.

Taracena, María I., La Caravana de la Resistencia, NACLA Report on the Americas, Vol. 50, no. 2, 2018, pp. 386-391

Taracena reports on the abuse that people belonging to the LGBTI+ community suffer at home and in Mexican detention centres because of their sexual orientation. She also juxtaposes the violations they encounter during the journey from Honduras to Mexico and portrays their immigration as an act of resistance against transphobia and homophobia.

In addition to Taracena 's report, attached is also an account of the death of a transgender woman, Roxsana Hernández, from Honduras who died in a detention centre in New Mexico who gave rise to LGBTI+ activism in the country.