Human Rights

A police operation in Choloma on June 25 displaced 15 families and arrested six people on usurpation charges, reigniting concerns among experts that new laws—including a decree strengthening agroindustrial protections and widening terrorism definitions—are hardening the state's response to land disputes.

Families of victims, peasant movement leaders, and Christian Democrats gathered for a mass at Tegucigalpa's cathedral to commemorate the 1975 Los Horcones massacre, in which 15 people—ten farmworkers and five Catholic priests—were killed during peasant-struggle unrest.

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.

A new CESPAD report on 2025 territorial conflicts in Honduras maps 77 disputes across 13 departments, analyzing underlying economic interests, legal frameworks, criminalization of land defenders, and impacts on human rights and communities.

The UNHCR representative in Honduras reports that more than 200,000 Hondurans are displaced due to violence, persecution, human-rights violations, and climate change impacts.

Honduras's human-rights ombudsman office handled 17,334 complaints filed by women between 2021 and June 2026, averaging nine per day, according to CONADEH's statistics unit.

CESPAD will present its 2025 report on social, territorial, and environmental conflicts in Honduras on June 23 in Tegucigalpa, covering key territories, actors, and economic dynamics driving conflict nationwide.

Honduras's Supreme Court voided Memorandum 02/2026 on gender identity, which had been issued earlier in 2026.

A congresswoman from Colón has introduced legislation to create a regional office of the State Secretariat for Human Rights in the department, aiming to provide closer access to human-rights services and strengthen protections for the local population.

The head of CODEH, a Honduran human rights group, said a bill that would expand self-defense law to allow lethal force against home intruders risks being abused and could give citizens a "blank check" to kill in a society already beset by violence and crime.

The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights warned that Honduras's newly approved agroindustrial law could harm indigenous and rural communities' land and territorial rights and deepen social conflict, urging Congress to align it with international standards.

Twenty judges, magistrates, and court staff from eight Honduran cities completed a UN-backed trainer program on gender and intersectionality, now mandatory in the Judicial School curriculum, aimed at aligning the justice system with international human-rights standards.

The Asfura government dissolved the Dipampco police anti-gang unit and created a new Anti-Extortion Division led by Commissioner Jorge Daniel Molina Gálvez, who faces two prior prosecutorial charges for illegal detention and abuse of authority, drawing concern from human-rights groups.

A report warns that 77 territorial conflicts, most described as high-intensity, remain active in Honduras amid what analysts characterize as a shift toward punitive government responses.

Dozens of human-rights activists began a seven-day, 75-mile walk from Tucson to the Sasabe border crossing to raise awareness about the more than 8,000 migrants estimated to have died on the U.S.-Mexico border since the late 1990s, many in Arizona's desert heat.

Congress approved penal code changes on May 18 that formally classify gangs and drug-trafficking networks as terrorist associations, but legal experts and human-rights groups warn the expanded, vague wording could be used against protesters and social movements.

An investigation found that Honduras's Armed Forces disbursed over L4.1 billion through 51 direct procurement contracts during the pandemic while a military-linked firm with a history of price-gouging received medicine orders and a general was appointed to oversee a corruption-plagued pandemic fund.