Anti Terrorism Law

The Center for Democracy Studies (Cespad) says proposed security decrees—including expanded terrorism definitions, high-risk zone powers, and detention rules—risk classifying social movements, land occupations, and environmental activism as terrorism, threatening fundamental freedoms and community organizing.

Human-rights lawyers are warning that Honduras's new anti-terrorism law grants the National Defense and Security Council broad power to intervene in territories and suspend constitutional guarantees without proper Congressional oversight.

Civil-society organizations filed a partial constitutional challenge to Honduras's 2026 anti-terrorism law targeting criminal gangs and the prison system, citing concerns over its provisions.

Congress passed sweeping legislation naming three criminal organizations as terrorist groups and imposing strict isolation, technology bans, and severe movement restrictions on inmates convicted of terrorism or gang membership.

Police in northern Honduras are invoking recently passed legislation—including an expanded terrorism statute and an agro-industrial protection decree—to suppress civic protests and conduct evictions, drawing accusations of excessive force and rights violations from human-rights groups and community leaders.

Amnesty International's Americas director said recent Honduran laws—including an expanded terrorism definition and an agro-industrial sector measure—resemble patterns seen elsewhere in Latin America that have been used to criminalize protest, though she noted Amnesty has not yet formally analyzed them.