OFRANEH
Translation by Internationalist 360°
After more than two decades since ILO Convention 169 was ratified and a decade after the United Nations Declaration on Indigenous Peoples was approved, the State of Honduras is imposing a Law of Prior Consultation for indigenous peoples with which allegedly seeks to “comply” with the commitments made, while dismantling the query to turn it into a mere administrative procedure.
The ideological kidnapping of the consultation that the State intends is nothing new, in a country where the small group of lawyers who protect power tend to legislate in order to reduce and deny rights in exchange for economic returns.
In the last 9 years the indigenous peoples of Honduras have faced a growing offensive aimed at dispossessing our ancestral territories, accompanied at the same time by a wave of violence, promoted by the State and business associations, which seek to seize the remnants of the called “natural resources”, as part of an extractivist vision, which is grounded in the destruction of Mother Earth.
The persecution and criminalization of leaders and defenders of our territories, as a measure of pressure for the business elite to achieve its objectives, has generated a series of murders, including that of Berta Cáceres (March 2016), apparently eliminated by active and retired soldiers. In addition, executives of the energy company pushed forward the construction of a hydroelectric plant without having carried out the prior, free and informed consultation (CPLI), entered as mandatory in Convention 169 (C169) and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
The murder of Berta Cáceres brought to light the enormous problem in Honduras regarding security and the application of justice. For more than two decades after the C169 was ratified, the State deliberately misrepresented the consultation with socialization, imposing laws, decrees, projects of “development” of protected areas. After the coup d’état (2009) an accelerated approval of unconscionable laws began, which have generated endless conflicts, which, in the absence of a state of law in the country, have become dispossessions. In the case of the Garífuna people, the approval of the Law of Special Regions for Development (2011), also known as “model cities” has given rise to enormous territorial pressures, especially in the bay of Trujillo, where in the communities of Guadalupe, San Antonio, Santa Fe, Cristales, Rio Negro and Puerto Castilla, a good part of its functional habitat was acquired by Canadian investors, the bay being known today as “little Canada”.
In spite of the fact that there are cases being heard in the Court of the City of Trujillo against Canadian citizens for usurpation, the decisions do not comply with the law, while Garífuna community leaders are persecuted for the defense of their ancestral territory, ignoring the jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (Court IDH) on indigenous rights. After having been defenestrated the Constitutional Court 12-12-12) by the legislative power, in retaliation for having declared the model cities unconstitutional, months later the “model cities” were re-introduced under the name of Special Zones of Employment and Development (ZEDE) ). Although the first version of the model cities included 24 of the 47 Garífuna communities in Honduras, in its second version it includes 20 Garífuna communities as presumed scenarios to establish the ZEDE. The “model cities” emerge as an initiative promoted by the American economist Paul Romer, who first tried his experiment in governance on the island of Mauritius, a situation that led to a coup d’état. Later Romer, after the coup in Honduras, foresaw in the existing crisis an opportunity to establish Special Economic Zones with the addition of justice and security outsourcing, giving rise to what can be considered quasi-independent nation-cities.
In the territories that have been considered as possible places for the location of the ZEDE, there has been strong speculation about real estate, generating population displacement. The demolition almost entirely of Río Negro – one of the first settlements of the Garífuna people in Honduras – is an indicator of the pressures that have been taking place in relation to the ZEDEs. Since the beginning of the “model cities”, Trujillo has been designated as the possible first location in Honduras.
The political swings in the country, added to the prevailing violence, has not allowed the takeoff of the “model cities”. However, last year prior to the November elections, the current president made a relaunch of the ZEDE, which included a trip to Texas in order to sell the ZEDE, which have become one of the axes of his government . The re-launch has apparently been supported by the Mckinsey Consultancy and the Inter-American Development Bank. Its portal includes a project prospectus aimed at “the conceptualization and preparation of technical studies and designs for the establishment of Employment Zones and Economic Development”.
One of the companies that has apparently shown interest in investing in the ZEDE, is the emporium of Kelcy Warren, owner of Energy Transfer, which intends to build an energy complex in the bay of Trujillo that would include a refinery, thermoelectric plant and a reconversion of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) that would serve to distribute shale gas from Texas for all of Central America. The majority of the “development” plans for the Bay of Trujillo include the displacement of the population of the Garífuna community of Puerto Castilla, which was relocated in 1973, when General Alvarez Martinez, gun in hand, forced the Garífunas of the community of Cristales and Río Negro to cede the territory of old Castile to the National Port Company. There is a huge apprehension on the part of the inhabitants of Puerto Castilla about a new relocation, which was announced to them two years ago.
The ignorance on the part of the State of the CPLI, and the use of the socialization like substitute, has taken a new course. Faced with pressures from the European Union FLEGT VPA and the UN-REDD Program, the state of Honduras in 2012 promoted the creation of a CPLI mechanism. Both the Confederation of Autonomous Peoples of Honduras (CONPAH), the National Directorate of Indigenous and Afro-descendant Peoples (DINAFROH) and the Observatory of Human Rights of Indigenous and Black Peoples (ODHPINH), made their own versions of the draft CPLI law.
However, in 2016, the UNDP and the State opted for a new version, for which they hired the Peruvian jurist Ivan Lanegra, author of the controversial Law of Consultation of Peru. Once again, the State sought to convert the socializations carried out together with the UNDP into a consultation process. Subsequently, with the visit made in August 2017 by the United Nations Rapporteur for indigenous peoples, Ms. Vicky Tauli Corpuz, the UNDP and the State chose to call the process carried out as a socialization.
Ms. Tauli Corpuz issued a second report in June 2017, called additional observations in which she urged the State of Honduras “to guarantee respect for international standards on prior consultation and other human rights of indigenous peoples.” Unfortunately, the State ignored the rapporteur’s remarks and in February of this year sent the International Labor Organization a new version, which we can point out as more harmful to indigenous peoples than the version of Mr. Ivan Lanegra and its variants.
We can indicate that the state of Honduras intends to carry out an ideological sequestration of the prior consultation, converting it into a mere administrative procedure, in which the indigenous peoples are denied their self-determination. As a result of this distortion of the consultation, the State and businessmen will be able to determine the future of our territories. Although the Rapporteur expressed in her additional observations “concern regarding the repeated comments heard linking free, prior and informed consent with a veto. In this regard, the Special Rapporteur reiterates the statement made by her predecessor that if the principles of consultation and consent are reduced to a debate on the existence of a veto power, the spirit and nature of those principles are lost sight of according to international standards. These principles seek to create a dialogue of good faith between States and indigenous peoples so that, through the search for agreements and consensus, historical models of imposition of decisions on indigenous peoples can be ended, threatening their survival as peoples”. The State included in article 2 of the preliminary draft that the “Consultation does not grant the right to veto,” besides ratifying that the decision of the consultation is taken by the State.
In August of last year, the National Congress approved the unconsultation of the Tourism Incentives Act, promoted by the consulting firm McKinse within the framework of the Honduras 20-20 program. The law allows from the use of protected areas for tourism investments to forced expropriation based on a law dating from 1913, which was invoked to pressure the inhabitants of Rio Negro and thus allow demolition for the construction of a cruise ship pier in Trujillo.
Beyond the manipulation that the State is carrying out with the purpose of deconceptualizing the CPLI, the consequences of organized crime and the failed state in Honduras are part of the chain of facts that call into question the existence of a state of law in the country. Despite the alleged advances in the fight against drug trafficking, the economic structures of organized crime remain intact, with the acquisition of huge tracts of land one of the most common forms of money laundering, a situation that has had serious consequences for the Garifuna communities.
As proof of the lack of adherence to the jurisprudence on the Consultation and the duty of the state of respect for that right, the Mayor of La Ceiba, Mr. Jerry Sabio, convened an open town council on July 6 to take the decision on the installation. of an 87-megawatt thermoelectric plant between the Garífuna communities of Corozal and Sambo Creek, despite the fact that community communities demanded the CPLI. Members of the communities filed the respective complaint with the Prosecutor of the Ethnic Groups, however the machinery continues to work on the construction of the thermoelectric plant.
Prior consultation is the core of the collective rights that indigenous peoples have. The draft Law on Consultation, promoted by AVA FLEGT, UN REDD, UNDP and the State of Honduras, in addition to distorting the consultation will lead to a cycle of violence against indigenous peoples.
