Everything indicates that the bloody murder was a state crime, given the authorities’ unwillingness to prosecute the intellectual authors. In addition to persistently denying the application of justice, the State continues with its policy of imposing obsolete projects as strategies of domination, deliberately conflating socialization with consultation.

Since the coup d’état, Honduras has become a scenario of undeclared war, where there have been more than 50,000 homicides and 400 massacres, most of which remain unpunished.

Since 1995, when Honduras ratified ILO Convention 169, it was assumed that national laws would be adapted to the Convention, as stipulated in the Vienna Convention (1969). However, for almost two decades, the State has ignored the application of the right to consultation, claiming that socializations are processes of consultation.

The watershed agreement adopted by the National Congress in 2010 gave rise to an endless number of social conflicts, which were resolved through violence. The group of families that took over the river basins for the construction of dams endangered hundreds of communities by undermining the right to water. The Agua Zarca case became a nightmare that led to the murder of Berta Cáceres, a crime instigated by the Atala family, who to this day have not given up on building the dam.

In 2012, the Moskitia’s maritime platform was handed over to BG, a process in which there was no consultation prior to the letter of intent signed by the State and BG at the end of 2012.

By September of the same year, after the procedures had been approved by the National Congress, the Ministry of the Environment (SERNA) accompanied by officials of the Committee for the Eradication of Racism and Discrimination (CERD) as a prior consultation.

European banks and the Central American Bank for Economic Investment (BCIE) appear to be financing the projects, despite having information that no prior consultation had taken place with the indigenous communities that would be affected. To date, the sinister words of the former president of the World Bank resonate. Mr. Jim Yong Kim, when addressing an audience of religious leaders in May 2016, referred to the murder of Berta Cáceres and the alleged urgency for the construction of hydroelectric projects in Honduras, dismissing the murder as a simple case of collateral damage.

Coincidentally, in the same year that Berta Cáceres was murdered, the UNDP took on the role of promoting a new version of the law, for which they hired the jurist Ivan Lanegra, author of Peru’s controversial Consultation Law. UNDP disregarded the versions prepared by the Human Rights Observatory of Indigenous Peoples in Honduras (ODHPIN), the Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of Honduras (CONPAH) and the National Directorate of XXX (DINAFROH), versions that included obtaining consent, which was eliminated in the version prepared by the Peruvian jurist’s team.

The role played by UNDP in relation to the lack of knowledge about the proposed laws, both by indigenous peoples and state institutions, encourages fears of the dispossessions that will occur in the near future in the name of the Programme for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD), which now replicates the tendency to ignore indigenous organizations that are not under the aegis of the current governing party, by developing REDD safeguards tailored to the interests of UNDP, UNIDO and the state.

In response to the complaints filed by indigenous organizations that defend their territories and cultures, the United Nations Rapporteur on indigenous peoples, Ms. Vicky Tauli Corpus, visited Honduras to learn about the progress made in creating a consultation mechanism. The Rapporteur issued her report in December 2016, in which she urged the “State of Honduras to guarantee that international standards on prior consultation and other human rights of indigenous peoples are respected”.

The state persisted in ignoring its error in relation to the preliminary draft and the enormous flaws in the preparation of the draft prepared by Lanegra, for which reason the Rapporteur issued her additional observations, in which she emphasized the “need to ensure greater participation of the various representative structures of indigenous peoples and the training and preparation of indigenous peoples, state officials and other actors; the need to build confidence by addressing indigenous peoples’ core human rights concerns; time pressures for the adoption of a consultation law; and concerns about the restricted interpretation of the legal conceptual framework of prior consultation”.

At the end of November 2018, a large delegation from the State of Honduras, coordinated by Deputy Oscar Nájera, appeared before CERD in Geneva, which babbled incoherently about an alleged apology for the draft Consultation Law promoted by UNDP.

We fear that the National Congress intends to approve the adefesio of the Consultation Law by March 3 as a tribute to Berta Cáceres. Knowing the cynicism surrounding the political party in power, the one that has turned Honduras into a failed state, it is not unusual for it to seek to turn the destruction of the collective rights of indigenous peoples by approving a law that distorts consultation into an alleged tribute to one of the heroines of the Honduran people.

The OFRANEH reaffirms its position in rejection of this Law of Prior Consultation socialized within the National Congress yesterday, since it will only legitimize the dispossession and expropriation of our ancestral territories, criminalize and prosecute the defenders of Mother Earth and condemn us to extermination as indigenous peoples.

We demand the compliance with the judgments that the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights made condemning the State of Honduras regarding the Garifuna communities of Triunfo de la Cruz and Punta Piedra, judgments that are related, among others, to the violation of prior consultation.

La Ceiba, January 16, 2020

Honduran Black Fraternal Organization, OFRANEH

Translation by Internationalist 360º