Impunity

Press-freedom group C-Libre is organizing a network of relatives of murdered and disappeared journalists and media workers in Honduras to seek memory, truth, and justice through collective action and mutual support.

Gabriela Castellanos, director of the National Anti-Corruption Council, warned that Congress is using procedural maneuvers—including reconsideration of approved acts—that echo discredited 2017 tactics and risk enabling corruption and impunity.

Amnesty International's global director Erika Guevara says Honduras faces persistent cycles of impunity for violence and severe human rights violations against land and environmental defenders.

Jeannette Kawas, the Tela activist murdered in 1995 for opposing illegal development of the Punta Sal peninsula, is remembered through the national park bearing her name—though no one has been arrested for her killing despite a 2009 Inter-American Court ruling against Honduras for negligence.

Honduras saw 235 alerts of attacks on journalists, communicators, and human rights defenders during 2024–2025, with a 19.6% spike in 2025 during the electoral period; C-Libre documents 11 murders, an 86.6% impunity rate, and state actors responsible for over half of all incidents.

Luis Javier Santos, a former UFERCO prosecutor, says Honduras's judiciary has long protected impunity by weakening, shelving, or stalling corruption cases — including Hermes, Arca Abierta, and a deputy-fund scheme — before they reach conviction.

A criminal court confirmed a three-and-a-half-year sentence against retired military officer Óscar Finlander Armijo Uclés for threats and property damage against a Tolupán family in San Francisco de Locomapa, though more than 35 related complaints filed since 2013 remain without prosecution and over ten people have been killed defending the territory.

The animal-welfare organization PETA has written to Honduras's attorney general demanding investigation and charges in the case of Spike, a dog dragged behind a vehicle in Choloma, one of at least 27 animal-abuse complaints received by police this year, highlighting widespread impunity in such cases.

Sexual violence against Honduran children is increasing amid widespread impunity, with only 1 in 10 cases prosecuted and 90.6% of reported offenses going unpunished, according to rights monitors and government data.

The municipality of Guaimaca approved an ordinance prohibiting motorcycle helmets within the town, citing efforts to reduce crime by eliminating anonymity, but national traffic authorities say the measure violates Honduras's Traffic Law, which mandates helmet use.

An investigation by Contracorriente found that Honduras, which has the highest femicide rate in Latin America, has secured just 46 convictions for femicide since the crime was codified in 2013, while 54% of cases that reached court remain unresolved, reflecting widespread impunity and state failure to prevent violence against women.

Honduras's national human-rights ombudsman cited an average of 29 violent deaths of women per month over 24 years and warned that legal penalties alone cannot stop gender violence without stronger investigations, prevention policies, and institutional safeguards for vulnerable women and girls.

Honduras's human rights ombudsman reported rising child homicides, teen pregnancies, sexual abuse, gang recruitment, forced displacement, and child labor, attributing the crisis to state failures in protection and enforcement and calling for strengthened institutions.

From 2019 to 2025, Honduras officially recorded 2,278 femicides, but courts have prosecuted only about 150 of those cases, leaving families like that of 18-year-old Cinthia Melissa Hernández—found buried in her home after her partner fled—struggling with despair and distrust in the justice system.

Honduras's national human-rights commission documented 65 police officers murdered in 2012, averaging one death every five days, with 85% of cases remaining unsolved and most victims killed while off duty.

Óscar Amilcar Alvarado Velásquez, secretary of a peasant cooperative in Colón, was shot dead on June 22 in the Aguán Valley, marking another killing of a rural leader amid state militarization and a new law social groups say favors agribusiness over peasant land rights.

Nearly 4.5 years after Angie Peña disappeared on January 1, 2022, her family and human-rights lawyers say the state has failed to genuinely investigate a human-trafficking network operating on the island of Roatán, with prosecutors unaware of the case's details and multiple investigation lines left uncoordinated.

Reina Margarita Carrasco, a 46-year-old founder of the Bastión del Sur citizen watchdog group and Libre party activist, was killed on January 22, 2026, two days after protesting at Congress over the disputed 2025 election; her murder remains unsolved.

Rights groups have recorded 108 femicides in Honduras through late May 2026, with activists noting more mutilated victims and a 95% impunity rate that leaves killers largely unpunished.

The arrest this month of the alleged killer of Carlos Luna, a forest-rights activist murdered 28 years ago, has brought some relief to his family and renewed attention to the dangers faced by environmental defenders in Honduras.