Caribbean & Central America - January 2026

President Xiomara Castro’s term came to an end on 27 January. Her successor, Nasry Asfura of the opposition Partido Nacional (PN), inherits a complex security situation, despite her claims to have improved key metrics.

The leftist Partido Libertad y Refundación (Libre) government, which came to power in January 2022, repeatedly touted its record on public security, claiming “positive results” and “a sustained decrease in crime rates over the course of [2025].” A decrease in the homicide rate is a particular point of pride, with the rate having almost halved since 2021, the year before Castro took office. Police figures show that the homicide rate has fallen from 41.71 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2021 to a projected 23.23 per 100,000 in 2025.

In a 23 August speech Castro also highlighted the fact that 56 criminals subject to extradition requests were captured from January 2022-August 2025, compared to just seven during the 12 years prior her time in office, as well as the destruction of 43 drug laboratories. She also said that under her administration over 250,000 coca plants and 60,000 marijuana plants have been destroyed while over 300 illegal firearms have been seized along with 30,000 pieces of ammunition.

Castro has claimed that this illustrates that the government has been “taking back spaces that were previously controlled by organised crime groups,” highlighting policies pursued by her government such as a state of exception, implemented in 2022 to tackle extortion which suspended certain civil rights and increased the involvement of the armed forces in public security, among other things. The state of exception affected 226 of the country’s 298 municipalities, including the central district (comprising Tegucigalpa and its sister city, Comayagüela).

However, the picture is more mixed than the government would have people believe. Analysis by US-based non-profit Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (Acled) published on 17 November supports Castro’s claim that Honduras has become less violent during her time in office, particularly in major cities, but underlines that this is due in part to shifting criminal dynamics and tactics rather than government policies.

The Acled report also highlights that violence in rural areas of Colón and Olancho departments, which is often linked to land disputes, has “significantly increased,” and points out that the increase in coca cultivation signals criminal diversification that poses additional security risks. According to Acled, violent crime is shifting from metropolitan areas to rural ones rather than decreasing across the board, and there is a shift in criminal tactics towards more targeted and hidden forms of violence, such as forced disappearances, rather than the public killings of old. 

• Forced disappearances

The 17 November report by US-based non-profit Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (Acled) cites Honduras’ directorate of police investigations as recording 1,523 disappearances in 2024, up from 1,230 in 2023.

Even taken on its own terms, there are some notable counterpoints to the government’s claims of improving public security. For example, in a 13 November statement, Asociación Para una Sociedad Más Justa (ASJ), the local chapter of anti-corruption NGO Transparency International (TI), points out that between November 2022 and June 2025, barely 294 of the 1,959 extortion-related complaints had resulted in a conviction. A report released in June 2025 by the same organisation revealed a rise in the number of households affected by extortion, with 11.6% of the population affected in 2024 (304,388 households), up from 9.0% (266,262 households) in 2022.

This is despite the fact that the state of exception was explicitly introduced to tackle extortion, revealing the failures of a policy long criticised by ASJ and other civil society groups.

Castro’s government also failed to make any major progress in dealing with corruption, despite promising to deal with what is a longstanding concern in Honduras on the campaign trail. Most significantly, Castro failed to follow through on a key pledge to establish a United Nations-backed anti-corruption commission (Cicih), raising questions about the government’s commitment to fighting graft.

Her reputation in this area also suffered due to a scandal in 2024 involving alleged ties between Castro’s inner circle and drug traffickers [SSR-24-10], while the government’s termination of a longstanding extradition treaty with the US that year, a decision which has since been reversed, did little to assuage concerns regarding links between the political establishment and organised crime.

The latest Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), published by TI in February shows Honduras ranking 154^th out of 180 countries. This is the same position as in 2023 and above only Nicaragua (172) in Central America. Meanwhile Honduras scored just 22 out of 100 in the CPI (where 0 means ‘highly corrupt’ and 100 ‘very clean’), down one point on the previous year.

In conclusion, Castro appears to have overseen a marked reduction in the homicide rate during her time in office, but this is due to shifting criminal dynamics as much as it is government policy. Indeed, perceptions of public security remain poor, with the expansion of extortion a particular concern for many ordinary Hondurans, and Libre has done little to fight corruption during the party’s time in power, meaning that Castro leaves office having failed to live up to the promise of a new reformist dawn that drove her election campaign.

Hernández

In a post on social media published on 4 December, Hernández said: “My profound gratitude goes to President… Trump for having the courage to defend justice at a moment when a weaponized system refused to acknowledge the truth”.

Arrest warrant for Hernández following US pardon

On 8 December Honduras’ attorney general, Johel Zelaya, announced an arrest warrant for former president Juan Orlando Hernández (Partido Nacional, 2014-2022), for money laundering and fraud charges. The announcement came five days after Hernández was released from prison in the US, where he had been serving a 45-year prison sentence for drug and weapons-related charges, following a pardon from President Donald Trump.

A social media post by Zelaya announcing the arrest order included a photo of a 2023 order signed by the supreme court which says the arrest order must be executed if Hernández, who was extradited to the US in April 2022, soon after Libre assumed power in January that year, was released.

The accusations are linked to the Pandora II anti-corruption investigation, an expansion of the so-called Pandora case – one of the most high-profile corruption cases to rock the country in recent years. The Pandora II case involves allegations that a corruption network syphoned off public funds worth over L288m (US$11m) between 2010-2013 for political campaigns ahead of the 2013 general election (which produced Hernández’s first victory). “We have been lacerated by the tentacles of corruption and by criminal networks that have profoundly marked the life of our country,” Zelaya said.

Meanwhile Trump’s decision to pardon Hernández caused outrage and bewilderment, not least given the US president’s declared fight against illegal drugs which has justified the build-up of US military in the Caribbean near Venezuela, and capture of President Nicolás Maduro who Washington claims leads the Cártel de los Soles, a Venezuelan drug trafficking group (see p.1-2).

Trump however claimed that Hernández was the victim of a “horrible witch hunt” under his predecessor, Joe Biden (2021-2025). Hernández claimed he was “set up by the Biden Harris administration and the deep state through a rigged trial” in a social media post published 4 December.