Caribbean & Central America - December 2022

The inauguration in late January of Xiomara Castro as Honduras’s first female president stoked considerable hopes that her left-wing Libertad y Refundación (Libre) government would deliver on women rights. However, a recent hearing by a United Nations (UN) committee of experts highlights that there is considerable work to be done.

On 19 October the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (Cedaw) concluded its consideration of the ninth periodic report of Honduras, flagging up grave concern regarding violence against women. A Cedaw press release reporting on the hearing cites statistics highlighted by a Cedaw expert that every 23 hours there was one female death in Honduras, which in 2019 had the highest femicide rate in Latin America, while 60% of these women died at the hands of partners. A Cedaw expert also flags up as “alarming” the high numbers of more than 46,000 cases of domestic violence reported in 2021. Among other things, the panel highlighted reforms prohibiting abortion (currently outlawed in all circumstances) and which supported the prohibition of the emergency contraceptive pill although there are some efforts underway to address this latter point (see box). In March 2021, under the previous conservative Partido Nacional (PN) government led by Juan Orlando Hernández (2014-2022), congress approved legislation making it more difficult to legalise abortion which stoked considerable outcry [SSR-21-03].

Headed up by Doris Yolany García Paredes, the head of Honduras’s national women’s institute (INAM), the Honduran government delegation which participated in the hearing acknowledged the need for a plan to combat femicide and the violent deaths of women. García also was cited by the panel as saying “the code of impunity would be amended”, and there was a “firm will to change impunity, which represented repression on the rights of women in Honduras”.

While the situation facing women in Honduras remains dire, the government delegation highlighted some progress made. It said that after 70 days, INAM was granted ministerial status, which it described as an “historic decision”. It noted that the office became the governing body of women’s rights and public policies, and its budget was increased from L43m (US$1.74m) to L53m by 2022. The government delegation also underlined the installation of a high-level commission tasked with agreeing on a consensual version of the first comprehensive law against violence against women. It notes that the government was in the process of finalising the national action plan against violence against women from 2023-2033, and was in the process of establishing a plan for gender equality and justice during the same period. Among other achievements (see sidebar) the government flagged up the fact that the first specialised national survey on violence against women and girls over 15 years of age was in the process of being prepared, coordinated with the national statistics institute, with support from the UN Development Programme.

• Moving to legalise morning after pill for rape victims

At the end of October Honduras’s health minister José Manuel Matheu said the ministry was looking to authorise the morning-after pill for rape victims although the complete ban on abortion would remain in place. During an event with women’s organisations on 31 October he was cited by reporters as saying “we are going to make the pill available for rape victims because it is not a contraceptive method”. The morning-after pill was outlawed in 2009. Matheu’s announcement has failed to impress women’s rights groups who continue to call for abortion to be legalised. According to a September 2022 document submitted by US-based NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) to Cedaw, UN human rights experts estimate that the number of unsafe abortions in Honduras could be between 51,000 and 82,000 per year. According to HRW in 2021, the health ministry reported 10,233 hospital discharges for abortion, which may also include miscarriages classified as abortions.

• Other achievements

In its report to Cedaw, the Honduran delegation cites as other achievements, the fact that the criminal code was being revised to “achieve significant changes in access to justice, especially for women” while under the gender policy of the national police, 70% of new leadership positions at the inter-departmental level were represented by female police officers. It cited as other signs of progress the creation of a draft law for the immediate search for disappeared women while for the first time, a budget for the national protection mechanism for human rights defenders (HRDs) had been allocated, and was currently dealing with 53 cases.