Latin America,

• EL SALVADOR: ‘Patriarchal justice persecutes, tortures and abuses women’

  CIVICUS speaks with Sara García Gross about the recent judgment of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) against the Salvadoran state, and the struggle of Salvadoran women for the right to abortion.

  Sara García Gross is advocacy coordinator of the Citizens’ Group for the Decriminalisation of Abortion in El Salvador. Founded in 2009, the organisation promotes public awareness to change abortion laws, provides legal support to women who have been convicted or charged with abortion or related crimes and disseminates information on the importance of women receiving adequate sexual and reproductive healthcare to prevent them resorting to unsafe, life-threatening abortions.

  What is El Salvador’s feminist movement demanding when it comes to sexual and reproductive rights?

  As feminists we are fighting to change the law that criminalises abortion under all circumstances. In El Salvador women are unjustly persecuted. Women’s reproductive rights are violated, especially for younger women and those who live in poverty and in the country’s rural areas. In this sense, we in the feminist movement are fighting to change a restrictive, absolutist and absurd regulatory framework.

  We are also fighting for women’s freedom. There are currently 12 women in prison serving sentences that are extremely unjust. Our fight is for women’s freedom and women’s lives. We want abortion to be legal in El Salvador. We fight for women to have the right to build our own lives. We denounce forced pregnancies; this is a form of torture. There are girls as young as 10 years old who face forced motherhood. There are young women who have not received any sexual education and do not have access to contraceptive methods. We are fighting for the right to comprehensive sex education.

  We also fight for the recognition of the rights of LGBTQI+ people, because hate crimes are another cruel form of torture that the state imposes or condones.

  What tactics does the Citizens’ Group for the Decriminalisation of Abortion use?

  In our struggle for women’s freedom, we have pursued multiple strategies, starting with strategic litigation to obtain everything from commutations of sentences to sentence reviews. Our focus is on achieving freedom, putting into practice the feminist slogan ‘I believe you sister’. We fight for the recognition of the innocence of women facing unjust and absurd sentences.

  But the legal route has not been our only key strategy; social mobilisation at national and regional levels has also played a major role. The feminist movement has organised and spoken out in relation to the cases of criminalised women. Sit-ins have been organised in front of embassies in El Salvador and other countries, letters have been sent to the courts and campaigns for reproductive justice have been carried out, including the ‘We are missing 17’ campaign.

  Another very important strategy has involved the Inter-American human rights system. We brought the case of a woman known as Manuela to the IACtHR, which recently condemned the Salvadoran state for cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. Strategic litigation in the Inter-American system has allowed us to address the problems of persecution, torture and judicial and police abuse faced by women in El Salvador. Justice in El Salvador is patriarchal justice.

  Another strategy has focused on collecting evidence. We have carried out an investigation called ‘From hospital to prison’, which allowed us to make this problem visible. Through a review and analysis of case files, sentences and investigations, we have been able to understand who anti-abortion legislation targets and who it persecutes: young and poor women living in rural areas. This constitutes intersectional discrimination.

  The campaigns, dialogues and debates we promote in academia as well as grassroots communities have also been part of our strategy. Advocacy processes are key, so that when we are able to identify windows of opportunity in the Legislative Assembly or other state institutions, we can promote the submission of new initiatives.

  In the past, several bills were submitted to reform article 133 of the Criminal Code to decriminalise abortion on four grounds. These bills were far from getting passed; in some cases they were quickly shelved and in others they languished for years in legislative committees. Women’s organisations were met with great hostility. However, our advocacy strategies allowed us to place the issue of abortion on the public agenda.

  What does Salvadoran public opinion think about abortion and what work are you doing to present an alternative narrative to criminalisation?

  Among public opinion, there is broad acceptance of abortion when it’s needed to save a pregnant woman’s life: more than half of the population has said so in various surveys.

  We live in a conservative country, with some fundamentalist groups calling themselves ‘pro-life’. The reality is that they are in favour of clandestine abortion, criminalisation and women dying. These groups maintain a double standard that we, as organised feminist civil society, work to expose. While women living in poverty are criminalised, those with economic resources are able to travel and access safe abortions. This double standard is unacceptable.

  For us, it is important to visualise other narratives and make women’s realities known. Reducing stigma requires showing, humanising and talking about life stories. These are women who had hopes and plans for their lives that state violence prevented them from realising.

  Talking about the issue in different places, humanising this reality and questioning this system that imposes the mandate of motherhood – a gender stereotype – allows us to address the issue without stigma or prejudice and, above all, from a human rights perspective.

  What are the implications of the IACtHR ruling in Manuela’s case?

  This ruling came after years of work and struggle. We started working on the case in 2011, providing psychosocial, political and legal support to Manuela’s family.

  Advocacy in the Inter-American system was key. The ruling in Manuela’s case is historic: the IACtHR has recognised that Manuela was innocent, that she really faced an obstetric emergency and that gender stereotypes, starting with the mandate of motherhood, permeated the entire process. The IACtHR has understood that the absolute ban on abortion results in criminalisation and obstacles to access to reproductive rights.

  The judgment will have both national and regional effects. The main regional effect is the establishment of jurisprudence that obliges both El Salvador and the rest of the countries in the region to take a series of measures. First, to guarantee professional secrecy of health personnel so that no woman seeking reproductive health services is denounced for alleged abortion-related crimes. Second, to ensure that gender stereotypes are not applied in the judicial sphere, including those claiming that women must act according to a reproductive role and, therefore, with maternal instinct. Third, to implement adequate protocols to attend to obstetric emergencies with accessible and quality health services.

  The Salvadoran state will have to carry out some additional actions in compliance with the IACtHR ruling. First, while it is in the process of regulating the obligation to maintain medical professional secrecy and the confidentiality of medical records, it must eliminate the practice of medical professionals denouncing women who seek reproductive health services. Second, it must provide full reparations to Manuela’s family. Third, it must make legislative and policy changes to ensure non-repetition, so that no one else goes through a similar experience, for instance by guaranteeing comprehensive care in cases of obstetric emergencies and adapting pre-trial detention so that it is only used in exceptional cases.

  We continue to fight so that women are never again criminalised. There are still 12 women who remain in prison, but we believe that Manuela’s case shines a light on these injustices and gives us the strength to continue fighting. For us, Manuela means justice and hope.

  What kind of support do abortion rights groups in El Salvador need from their peers around the world? 

  We believe feminist solidarity is key. We want to make this issue visible in the region and the world. We want people to talk about what is happening here. We want people to talk about the consequences of the absolute prohibition of abortion. We want people to talk about how this punitive system does not solve anything.

  It is not acceptable for the exercise of a reproductive right – a right to health – to be treated as a crime entailing prison sentences. We need to shine the spotlight on El Salvador and make the Salvadoran state feel it is being watched. Every chance we get, we must demand freedom for women, freedom for the 12 who are still in prison and reparations for all the women who have faced this kind of criminalisation. We must demand that abortion be legally recognised as a right.

  Civic space in El Salvador is rated ‘obstructed’ by theCIVICUS Monitor.
  Get in touch with Citizens’ Group for the Decriminalisation of Abortion in El Salvador through itswebsite orFacebook andInstagram pages, and follow@AbortoPORlaVIDA on Twitter. 

• EL SALVADOR: ‘Rather than a real security policy, what the government has is an electoral strategy’

  CIVICUS speaks about the one-year state of emergency in El Salvador with César Artiga, founder and coordinator of the National Promoting Team of the Escazú Agreement and of the National Promoting Group for Resolution 2250 on the Youth, Peace and Security Agenda.

  These citizen groups have supported processes of social awareness-raising, legal empowerment and political advocacy since 2017. They promote and defend human rights, peace building, justice and sustainability by working with groups and communities living in conditions of exclusion and vulnerability, particularly in relation to their environmental rights.

• EL SALVADOR: ‘The president’s aim is to concentrate power’

  CIVICUS speaks with Eduardo Escobar, executive director of Acción Ciudadana, an organisation that promotes transparency, accountability and the fight against corruption in El Salvador, about the political situation since President Nayib Bukele’s party won the February 2021 legislative election.

  

  Do you think that democracy and the rule of law are being eroded in El Salvador?

  We should first ask ourselves whether El Salvador ever had a full democracy with the rule of law. If we reduce democracy to its electoral dimension, we could say that the will of the people has been respected and elections have become the only road to power. Despite some irregularities, we have had democracy in that sense. Since 2009, some progress was also made in terms of the balance of powers: we got an independent Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court, an independent Institute for Access to Public Information (IAIP) and a prosecutor’s office that was striving to do its job.

  Thus, when Nayib Bukele became president in 2019, there was a functioning electoral democracy, with some important advances being made in the republican dimension and the rule of law. President Bukele interrupted this process, constantly attacking the freedom of expression, the freedom of the press and the freedom of association. In the context of the pandemic, the government illegitimately and unconstitutionally violated the freedom of movement. What little progress had been made was completely lost.

  After the legislative elections held on 28 February 2021, which Bukele won by a wide margin, legal certainty ceased to exist. As soon as the new legislative assembly formed in early May, it dismissed the judges of the Constitutional Chamber and the head of the attorney general’s office. We had come to trust that the Constitutional Chamber would protect us from arbitrariness, but that certainty vanished in an instant. Shortly afterwards, the new Constitutional Chamber enabled the president’s immediate re-election for a second term, so far prohibited by the Salvadoran Constitution.

  Have the opposition or civil society been able to do anything about recent changes?

  The opposition was not smart. Until May 2021 it held an absolute majority in the legislative assembly but failed to take advantage of it. Opposition parties didn’t think they needed to hurry because they never thought they would lose. Now they have become irrelevant. Their presence is merely testimonial because the president’s party, Nuevas Ideas, and its allies have a supermajority. The opposition is limited to making statements and peddling proposals that everyone knows will not prosper.

  Most of civil society has been closed off from participating in the legislative process. It is not that in the past every civil society proposal was approved – in fact, they were often not even discussed – but there were certain thematic areas where civil society participation was vital to pass a law. That is over: now only pro-government organisations are invited and admitted to committee sessions. Independent civil society has little influence over public policy because the government does not understand its role and is unwilling to integrate its input into decision-making. Thus, it has been reduced to a voice of denunciation with no power to reverse illegal or unconstitutional decisions, as there are no independent institutions left to react to its demands.

  President Bukele campaigned on an anti-corruption programme. Has there been any progress in this regard?

  The instrumentalisation of the issue of corruption was one of the bases of Bukele’s victory; his campaign slogan was ‘give back what you stole’. The issue of corruption is broad and complex, but that slogan was clear and precise, and appealed to many people. But it was only a campaign strategy.

  Once in power, he deactivated all existing anti-corruption mechanisms, disregarding IAIP resolutions, preventing audits by the Court of Auditors of government ministries, denying the prosecutor’s office access to public bodies involved in corruption cases, and finally removing the prosecutor and imposing one of his unconditional supporters, who even has legal complaints filed against him. We have no way of knowing the government’s expenditure, particularly those related to the pandemic. The administration has been so opaque that we don’t even have reliable data on how many people were infected with COVID-19, how many were hospitalised and how many died. The government does not provide information, it hides it. And when there are revelations or allegations of corruption, it attacks and defames the whistle-blower.

  How has this situation affected Acción Ciudadana’s work?

  Acción Ciudadana promotes political reform, transparency, accountability, citizen participation and the fight against corruption and impunity. Hence, much of the work we do is monitoring: we monitor political financing, internal political party elections and electoral propaganda; the work of the attorney general’s office, transparency in public administration and obstacles to access information; and the functioning of institutional mechanisms for the prevention, detection and punishment of corruption.

  To do our investigations we need access to public information, but the avenues of access are being closed. For example, the law establishes that information on travel by public officials must be public; however, the government has decided that this information is to be kept confidential for seven years. In this particular case there has been some pressure in the media and on social media, and the government changed its criteria and now withholds this information for up to 30 days after each trip, supposedly to protect the security of the concerned official. This is still illegal.

  When we are denied information that should be public, we can no longer turn to the bodies that safeguard access to information because they are either co-opted or frightened. For example, some political parties – starting with the ruling party – do not hand over their financial information to us. We have repeatedly denounced this to the Supreme Electoral Tribunal for almost three years, but the Tribunal does not accept our complaints. So when a party does not provide us with information, we no longer appeal to the Tribunal, and when faced with an unconstitutional law, we no longer appeal to the Constitutional Chamber.

  We have also lost much of our advocacy capacity. Normally our monitoring would lead to legal complaints and criminal investigations. But nowadays the most we can do is publish the results of our investigations in some media outlets and offer them to the public. We can no longer feed them into institutional processes. For example, we found that in the 2019 presidential campaign a company donated US$1 million to the Grand Alliance for National Unity, Bukele’s electoral coalition, and in 2020 the government awarded that company a public-private partnership contract to manage and expand the airport. We see this as a case of conflict of interest, but we cannot take the issue to the prosecutor’s office or the Court of Auditors and ask them to investigate.

  President Bukele seems difficult to classify ideologically. What is his programme?

  If I had to classify the president’s party, I would say that it is a catch-all party, without an ideologically defined political project. Until he was expelled in 2017, Bukele belonged to the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, and he portrayed himself as a revolutionary leftist who embraced Hugo Chávez and spoke of social justice. Then, as president-elect, he gave a speech at the Heritage Foundation, one of the most conservative think tanks in the USA, and he couldn’t have sounded more neoliberal. He has always claimed that the issues that need solutions were not a matter of ideology, and Nuevas Ideas was set up with the logic that everyone could fit in it, regardless of whether they were on the left or on the right. And that’s how it has been; there’s a bit of everything in there.

  Bukele does not have an ideological programme; his aim is to concentrate power. He can take right-wing or left-wing measures, but not because he has one ideology or the other, but because it happens to be what benefits him the most. For example, most of the pension system in El Salvador is private and he will probably nationalise it, not because he believes that this essential public service should be managed by the state, but because the Pension Fund moves millions of dollars, and the government wants to get its hands on it because it is short of resources, in debt and without further sources of funding, since the possibility of an agreement with the International Monetary Fund has just collapsed. Of course, privatisation is being presented as an act of justice towards pensioners, who receive miserable pensions. Based on this measure, an outside observer might think that his is a leftist government, but this is not an ideological measure, but rather one made out of convenience. The government is driven by the pursuit of political and economic gain, which is why it often appears erratic or improvised. There is no vision to guide the government’s planning.

  What are the causes of the protests currently faced by the government?

  The protests that began in early September erupted in reaction to the adoption of bitcoin as an official currency alongside the US dollar. Many people who support and value Bukele have opposed this measure, because they thought it could adversely affect them. This is the first government measure that has been widely rejected, and I think it was not only because of opposition to the cryptocurrency, but also because of the way decisions are being made, in the absence of sufficient information, debate and participation. Bukele made the announcement of this measure at an event in Miami on a Saturday, and the following Monday the bill was submitted to Congress. By Tuesday it had been passed. Everything was resolved in three or four days, amid total secrecy.

  Unfortunately, the reaction on this issue has been an exception, possibly because it is a subject that many people don’t understand much about, which causes fear. Generally speaking, most people applaud the president, his handling of the pandemic and his Territorial Control Plan, which is a strategy for militarising citizen security. This is because the narrative constructed by the government has been successful. For example, when the judges of the Constitutional Chamber were dismissed – a manoeuvre that civil society denounced as a coup d’état – the government said that the corrupt had been thrown out and many people believed it. There were people who came out to protest, not only from organised civil society, but also citizens in general, but they were a minority. It is difficult to counter the official narrative.

  What support does Salvadoran civil society need to be able to play its full role?

  It is quite complicated. Journalists manage to get information leaked to them and get their stories out, but we are not journalists. To get the information we need to play our accountability role we look for it on institutional portals and make information requests. Any effort to get public institutions to disclose information a bit more would help us.

  We also need support in terms of personal and digital security, as well as in the area of communications, because evidently civil society has not been able to communicate our messages adequately and we have not been able to build an alternative narrative to the official one.

  Civic space in El Salvador is rated ‘obstructed’ by theCIVICUS Monitor.
  Get in touch with Acción Ciudadana through itsFacebook page and follow@CiudadanaAccio1 and@esec76 on Twitter. 

• Global civil society condemns violent repression of anti-government protests in Venezuela
  • 40 people killed and more than 800 detained since public protests began on January 23
  • Journalists covering demonstrations have been attacked
  • The UN has called for an independent investigation into the state’s alleged used of force against protesters
  • The government of President Nicolás Maduro has often used violence against protesters since coming to power in 2013.
  • Global civil society groups have urged authorities to release all detainees and uphold citizens’ rights and the rule of law
  • Government shuts down civil society organisations as part of ongoing campaign of repression in Nicaragua
    •  Parliament has cancelled the legal registration of nine civil society organisations (CSOs)
    • The move comes after some of the CSOs participated in hearings into human rights violations at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
    • The shutdown of CSOs comes at a time of serious attacks on fundamental freedoms in Nicaragua
    • Global civil society groups express concern that more Nicaraguan CSOs may be targeted

    

    Global civil society alliance, CIVICUS, has condemned the cancellation of the legal registration status of nine civil society organisations in Nicaragua as an affront to the right to freedom of association. The move to shut down the groups is seen to be in retaliation for their participation in hearings on Nicaragua’s deteriorating human rights situation at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

    On December 12, Nicaragua’s parliament voted to cancel the legal registration of the human rights organisation, Centro Nicaraguense de Derechos Humanos (CENIDH). The following day they voted again to cancel the registration of five more organisations including Instituto de liderazgo las Segovias (ILLS), Instituto para el Desarrollo de la Democracia (IPADE), Fundación del Rio, Centro de Investigación de la Comunicación (CINCO) and Fundación Popol Na.

    Just a week prior, CENIDH has been part of a delegation of rights groups who provided a hearing before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights with information on the social impact of ongoing human rights violations. They called on the government to stop violently repressing peaceful protests and attacking critical voices.

    “After using violence to target peaceful protesters, the government of Nicaragua now extends its repression to civil society organisations because of its perception that they have publicly criticized human rights violations committed since the start of protests in April 2018.” said CIVICUS’ Natalia Gomez.

    Restrictions on fundamental freedoms in Nicaragua increased substantively in April when the government violently dispersed demonstrations against changes to the country’s social security system. Since then, more than 300 people have been killed and more than 600 remain detained. The government is now targeting CSOs that denounce these human rights violations. Ana Quiroz, the head of one of the organisations and a Costa Rican by birth who had lived and worked in Nicaragua for more than 40 years, was stripped of Nicaraguan nationality and deported.  

    Shortly before CENIDH’s registration was cancelled, police rejected their request to conduct a peaceful march in commemoration of the 70^th anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. CENIDH cancelled the march and only said, they would go to the judicial authorities to ask for the protection of their rights.

    “Freedom of association is guaranteed in the constitution of Nicaragua and must be respected at all times. Instead of targeting civil society groups, the government of Nicaragua should rather create an enabling environment for civil society and seek ways to address the needs of its citizens.” Gomez continued.

    CIVICUS has called on the Nicaraguan authorities to reverse the cancellation of the registration of all civil society organisations, to respect the right to freedom of association and assembly and release all those in detention for participating in peaceful protests.

    In September, the CIVICUS Monitor, an online platform that tracks threats to civil society in countries across the globe, downgraded its rating of civic space – the space for civil society – in Nicaragua from “narrowed” to “repressed”. Nicaragua is also on the platform’s watchlist of countries that have seen an sudden, alarming spike in restrictions on civil space.

    For more information please contact:

    Natalia Gomez:

    The CIVICUS media team:

    To request interviews, you can also contact the CIVICUS Press Centre here.

  • GUATEMALA: ‘Anti-rights groups seek to maintain the privileges of some at the expense of the rights of others’

    CIVICUS speaks with the team of Visibles about recent anti-rights developments in Guatemala.

    Founded in 2017, Visibles is a Guatemalan organisation that works to achieve the full inclusion of diverse people and build a society where all people can exercise their rights and enjoy respect, freedom and wellbeing.

    The draft Law for the Protection of Life and the Family had been shelved for several years. Why was it finally approved now?

    Bill 5272, passed by the Guatemalan Congress as Decree 18-2022, increased penalties for abortion to a minimum of five years in prison and banned same-sex marriage and the teaching of sexual diversity in schools.

    It had been submitted on 26 April 2017 by a representative of the conservative party Visión con Valores (‘Vision with Values’). After obtaining a favourable opinion from the Committee on Legislation and Constitutional Affairs, the full Congress discussed and approved it on its first two readings in 2018.

    But to pass a law in Guatemala, it is necessary to gather the support of a certain number of lawmakers before submitting it to a vote on the floor. This did not happen until 2022, when the ruling alliance and the political and economic groups that support them made it one of their priorities to promote this conservative agenda.

    The current president of Congress, Shirley Rivera, came to this position after a very limited career, focused solely on proposing laws that stigmatise the transgender population and seek to grant greater freedoms to churches, particularly in the way they report on their finances.

    In March, in a sort of counterbalance to the traditional celebration of International Women’s Day, a day of feminist mobilisation, Congress declared a National Day of Commemoration of Life and Family and approved this regressive initiative. From its various branches, the state promoted a number of communication actions and events involving national and international groups linked to the anti-gender movement, aimed at promoting the defence of life from the moment of conception and a traditional, narrow and exclusionary definition of the family – that is, a broad cause that seeks to restrict the autonomy and freedoms of women and LGBTQI+ people.

    On the same date, Congress passed Decree 18-2022, and by an overwhelming majority: only eight out of 160 legislators voted against it, while 52 abstained. 

    Do you see this move as part of a broader regional anti-rights trend?

    It definitely is. Anti-rights groups in Guatemala are part of a highly organised and well-funded transnational movement that aims to undermine the rights of women and LGBTQI+ people, as well as the broader participation of civil society in public debate and decision-making.

    The passing of Decree 18-2022 was not a reaction against the very limited progress made in recent years in the recognition of sexual and gender diversity and women’s rights. It served to reinforce social hierarchies that benefit the powerful and maintain or even increase their power.

    Women and LGBTQI+ people are easy targets. The attacks against us reflect a resistance to the social transformations we seek: to unleash the talents and potential of more than half the population.

    The feminist, women’s, and diversity movements represent some of the obstacles facing this project of power and control, but they are not the only ones. Another obstacle arises from the fact that thanks to increased access to technology, social discontent has grown and voices have risen demanding accountability. There are growing demands for urgent action to transform the economy to ensure that it serves to create better opportunities for all individuals and families, as well as growing attention on issues such as climate change and the preservation of the environment and of the lives of those resisting transnational extractivism.

    How did civil society organise in the face of this anti-rights attack?

    In Guatemala, there are numerous organisations – women’s, Indigenous peoples’, youth, sexual and gender diversity, student and religious organisations – that have organised to resist the advances of this regressive agenda. After spaces for the fight against corruption shut down, following the dissolution of the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala in September 2019, one of the main developments that took place was the criminalisation of those who had promoted it, from human rights defenders to prosecutors and judges who had worked within state institutions.

    This closure of spaces prompted the search for new ideas and routes to advance the construction of justice. Now, resistance to the entry into force of Decree 18-2022 has shown us the way.

    The state of Guatemala has actively and systematically collaborated to create a narrative hostile to the rights of women and LGBTQI+ people. And it has done so in a very hypocritical way, as it has promoted public policies that invoke the protection of life and family while at the same time demonstrating a complete lack of commitment to improving the conditions in which Guatemalan individuals and families live. This incoherence becomes an insult when a law is passed that, by criminalising women and LGBTQI+ people, endangers more than half of the population.

    On the same day that Decree 18-2022 was passed, protests began. Street pressure was novel and important: it showed that organisations can work in a coalition and that people are willing to join in and look out for the welfare of all.

    Mobilisation raised the cost the government would pay if it validated the congressional decision. The administration led by President Alejandro Giammattei was already unpopular and facing a growing number of demands for accountability – from journalistic investigations revealing the misuse of power and allegations of corruption to international sanctions against key officials. In this context, President Giammattei threatened to veto the law on the grounds that it violated Guatemala’s constitution and international agreements Guatemala has made, and Congress reacted by reversing and shelving the law.

    How is Visibles working to improve the situation of LGBTQI+ people in Guatemala?

    Visibles works to change people’s ideas, attitudes and behaviours towards LGBTQI+ people and their rights through research, training, proactive communication, and advocacy efforts. We believe that our long-term vision – that of a society that is fully inclusive of diverse people, ensuring that we all enjoy respect, freedom, and wellbeing and can exercise all of our rights – is only achievable if we start by having one-to-one conversations with families, friends, and people within our spheres of action so that we can move together from a position of prejudice to one of acceptance.

    The experience of collective resistance in the face of anti-rights advances united inspired and engaged us further. Resistance against a tangible policy that seeks control over our bodies and our lives as women and LGBTQI+ people challenged us much more directly than a distant and abstract notion of access to justice. Today we are driven by the collective construction of a gender justice project that enshrines the right of all people to live with dignity. We hope that these new practices and transformative goals will revitalise the human rights movement.

    What international support does civil society defending the human rights of LGBTQI+ people in Guatemala need?

    The approval of – and subsequent U-turn over – Decree 18-2022 gave us a taste of the real power the state has over women and LGBTQI+ people in Guatemala. The risk does not disappear because the law has been shelved, but this may hopefully have the effect of sending a wake-up call to the international community.

    It is important that they turn their attention, support and resources to Guatemala, whose anti-rights forces are part of a regional advance guard. We cannot lower our guard and allow anti-gender movements to advance their goal of sustaining and consolidating unjust structures of unequal power in which some maintain their privileges at the expense of the basic rights of others.

    Civic space in Guatemala is rated ‘obstructed’ by theCIVICUS Monitor.
    Get in touch with Visibles through itswebsite or itsFacebook andInstagram pages, and follow@visiblesgt on Twitter. 

  • GUATEMALA: ‘Criminal law is being used as a weapon of political persecution’

    CIVICUS discusses corruption in Guatemala and the criminalisation of anti-corruption activism with Claudia González, former member of the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) and Virginia Laparra’s defence attorney.

    Virginia Laparra is a former prosecutor of the Special Prosecutor’s Office against Impunity (FECI) who has recently been unjustly sentenced to four years in prison. The #LibertadParaVirginia (#FreedomForVirginia) campaign is mobilising in response.

  • GUATEMALA: ‘Judicial harassment and criminal prosecution have wearing effects’

    On World Press Freedom Day, CIVICUS speaks with Carlos Ernesto Choc, a Q’eqchi’ Mayan journalist with almost two decades of experience, about the criminalisation of journalism and the media in Guatemala.

    What are the conditions for journalists in Guatemala?

    The conditions for the practice of journalism in Guatemala are quite difficult. We face criminal prosecution by the Public Prosecutor’s Office and threats from various sources, including public officials that journalists are questioning or investigating. Defamation campaigns against journalists are also very concerning.

    The internet and social media are full of trolls who send threatening and defamatory messages. They discredit journalistic work and attacks naturally follow. These even come from the state, and particularly from public security agencies. The National Civil Police attack the media and journalists both in the context of demonstrations and at other times and places where they do not want coverage of events in order to preserve impunity for crimes or violations of rights perpetrated on the ground.

    Since 2015, aggressions against the press have only escalated. Now as well as being criminally prosecuted, judicially harassed, threatened, intimidated and vilified, you can be thrown into prison. To be able to do this, they accuse you of charges that are normally used to fight organised crime, such as illicit association, as in my case, or money laundering, as in the case of my colleague Rubén Zamora. In other words, we are accused of being criminals and prosecuted under accusations of having links to organised crime, leading land invasions or instigating crime. These are clearly fabricated accusations, so we are baselessly, illegally detained. They ultimately have no way of proving their accusations, but in the meantime you remain subject to lengthy criminal proceedings.

    While all journalists are vulnerable in this country right now, those of us who investigate environmental aggression, human rights violations and issues related to drug trafficking and corruption are particularly vulnerable. These are really complicated issues and some investigate them anonymously because many have been murdered, the most recent being Eduardo Mendizabal, just over a month ago.

    The situation is getting more complicated by the day and some community journalists have chosen to emigrate and quit journalism. It is sad to see colleagues leave, and under the current government there have been more and more of them. I don’t see myself in exile, but I view this as an option of last resort.

    What is your situation after the criminalisation you have experienced?

    Mine has been a case of judicial persecution that has been used to attempt to silence me. It started in 2017 when I was investigating the pollution of Lake Izabal. I was documenting protests by fishers against mining and I captured the exact moment when a protester was killed by shots fired by the National Civil Police. The accusation against me came from the mining company, Solway Investment Group – a Russian-owned company based in Switzerland. In August 2017, a warrant for my arrest was issued. One hearing after another was postponed so only in January 2019 could I finally give testimony before the court, as a result of which I was handed an alternative measure to prison.

    When you have an alternative measure to imprisonment you are free under certain conditions: you are forced to visit the Public Prosecutor’s Office every 30 days to sign in and forbidden to be in any place where alcoholic drinks are sold, among other things. The security forces, the police, the authorities are watching where you are and waiting for you to commit a breach to be able to prosecute you. I see these alternative measures as forms of punishment that imply restrictions and limitations on your right to inform and be informed.

    In January 2022, I was criminally prosecuted again, under accusations by the National Civil Police of instigating violence during a protest by Indigenous communities in Izabal against the country’s largest active open-pit mine, owned by Solway’s subsidiary Compañía Guatemalteca de Níquel. Thirteen police officers accused me of having physically assaulted them, when all I was doing was documenting the moment when security forces repressed people with teargas. Since then I could not continue doing my job as a journalist, nor move around freely, until my lawyers managed to prove to the judge that I really am a journalist and not a criminal. In September the charges against me were dropped. It has been very exhausting: judicial harassment and criminal prosecution have wearing effects.

    What strategies have journalists adopted to be able to continue working?

    Strategies to break through censorship are renewed every day and are often focused on both physical and digital security, particularly concerning the security of documents and files. Local, national and international networking among journalists and alternative and independent media is also very important.

    Such networks have made possible works such as Green Blood, published in 2019, and Mining Secrets, published in 2022. Both were led by Forbidden Stories, an organisation based in France that supports the publication of the work of journalists facing threats, criminalisation and violence in their countries. Green Blood was the result of research conducted in three countries on three continents: Guatemala, India and Tanzania, and looks into the mining industry’s tactics to hinder journalistic work and criminalise those who oppose its practices. Mining Secrets arose from the leak of a huge amount of Solway’s internal files concerning the operation of its Fénix mining project in Izabal. A consortium of 20 media outlets from 15 countries around the world carried out an investigation, with information corroborated by 65 journalists, including the Prensa Comunitaria team I was part of.

    It is all about finding a way to continue doing the work you are doing. Like many others, I do journalism out of passion and conviction. I don’t expect a prize or international recognition. I know that what I am doing is going to help my community and society in general. I believe that shedding light on environmental damage and human rights violations is very important.

    What kind of support do journalists and community media in Guatemala currently receive, and what additional support would they need?

    We receive support mainly in the form of accompaniment: legal accompaniment, accompaniment from human rights organisations and accompaniment from communities and community authorities who support our work.

    This is very important, but much more is needed. A difficulty that criminalised or at-risk journalists experience is that of surviving economically and supporting their families, which is why economic support is important. The same goes for health support, because there are times when, due to all you are going through, your body no longer responds. Finally, it is key to provide opportunities for exchange with other journalist colleagues. It helps a lot to learn about the experiences of others.

    ---

    Civic space in Guatemala is rated ‘repressed’ by theCIVICUS Monitor.

    Follow@CarlosErnesto_C on Twitter.

  • GUATEMALA: ‘The protests were a reflection of both social organisation and citizen autonomy’

    CIVICUS speaks about recent protests in Guatemala with Sandra Morán Reyes, an advocate of women’s and LGBTQI+ rights. With a long history of participation in social movements, Sandra was one of the co-founders of the first Guatemalan lesbian group and the organiser of the first pride march in Guatemala, held in 1998 in Guatemala City. In 2015, she was elected as a national congressional representative, becoming the first gay congresswoman and politician to be elected to popular office in the history of her country. From that position, she promoted various initiatives to advance the rights of women and sexual minorities.

    What was the background to the November 2020 protests and how did they begin?

    A new government was inaugurated in January 2020, and soon after that we found ourselves locked up because of the pandemic. But by May or June some of our colleagues started to take to the streets again, partly to criticise the government’s attitude towards the needs of the population as the effects of the crisis generated by the pandemic began to be clearly seen. Suddenly white flags started to appear on the streets, on house doors and in the hands of people and families walking the streets or sitting in doorways. With the white flag people indicated that they did not have enough to eat, and solidarity actions began to take place, for instance in the form of soup kitchens, which did not previously exist in Guatemala. There was a great movement of solidarity among people. While organisations were busy attending to their own members, citizens made great efforts to provide person-to-person support. It became common for people to go out into the streets to give a little of what they had to those who needed it most. This was then repeated regarding those who were affected when hurricanes hit and lost everything.

    At the state level, a lot of resources were approved to alleviate the effects of the pandemic, but these resources did not reach the people and the needs of the population remained unmet, so the question that people began to ask was, ‘where is the money?’

    From 2017 onwards, we started denouncing what we called the ‘corrupt pact’ that brought together public officials, businesspeople and even church representatives in defence of their own interests. In 2015, after six months of sustained mass demonstrations, the president and vice president ended up in prison, but the governments that succeeded them ended up reaffirming the same old system. The government of President Jimmy Morales unilaterally ended the agreement with the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala, and the current government led by President Alejandro Giammattei, following on from its predecessor, has made progress in controlling the judiciary, Congress and all state institutions in order to sustain corruption as a form of government.

    The effects of the lack of attention to the impacts of the pandemic and of hurricanes Eta and Iota, which struck in October and November 2020, were compounded by attacks on the officials of the Public Prosecutor’s Office who continue to fight against corruption. Discontent continued to accumulate until the early hours of November 2020 when Congress approved the national budget for 2021. It was a very high budget – the highest in the country's history – and it included obvious pockets of corruption, especially in the area of infrastructure contracts, which is where the bulk of corruption takes place, but paid no attention to health and education, in the context of a pandemic. Budget cuts even affected the national nutrition programme, in a country that has a huge problem of child malnutrition. That was the last straw. People who are not normally prone to protest – a professional chef, an artist, many well-known people in different fields – started writing on social media and expressing anger against this decision. That’s how the first demonstration was organised, and suddenly we were about 25,000 people out there, in the middle of a pandemic.

    By that time all restrictions on movement and gatherings had been lifted, but the pandemic was still ongoing and the risk of contagion was still there. No one foresaw such a massive protest, and yet it happened. The demonstrations were initially peaceful, but already during the second one there was violence and repression. A small group set fire to the Congress building, an event that is still under investigation. This was used to justify the repression: teargas, beatings, arrests and detentions, something that had not happened for a long time. In another demonstration, people set fire to a bus. From our perspective, these acts of violence were instigated to justify the need for more police control over demonstrations and ultimately the repression of protests.

    Was the call for mobilisation made exclusively through social media? Who mobilised?

    There were a series of calls through social media that appealed above all to the middle classes, but social movements and Indigenous authorities also made their calls. Indigenous authorities have played an increasingly important role in recent years, and in the context of this crisis they published a statement in which they proposed a governing council of the four main groups of peoples who make up Guatemala - Maya, Xinka, Garífuna and Mestizo - to pave the way for a Constituent Assembly. They have been visiting territories and working to form alliances, and this was the first time that they have made steps towards the national government, as for now they have only had authority within their territories. The role they have played is important because the oligarchy has always been afraid of an Indigenous uprising; that fear is what moves them, just as they were moved by the fact that in 2019 the candidate for president of the People's Liberation Movement, a party founded by the Peasant Development Committee (CODECA), came in fourth place. A Mayan woman, a peasant, with little schooling, came in fourth place, and they found that very upsetting.

    Four main actors mobilised: Indigenous peoples, women, young people and what are called ‘communities in resistance’ – local communities, generally led by women, who are resisting extractive mega-projects in their territories. The latest demonstrations also evidenced the results of the newly achieved unity of the university student movement: from 2015 onwards, students from the public university of San Carlos de Guatemala marched together with those from the two private universities, Universidad Rafael Landívar, of middle-class students, and Universidad del Valle, which caters to the upper class. The motto under which the public university used to march, ‘USAC is the people’, turned into ‘We are the People’ as a result of this convergence. This was a historical event that marked the return of organised university students to popular struggles.

    The role of young people can also be seen within the feminist movement, as there are many young feminist movements. In particular, the Women in Movement collective, a very important expression of university-based feminists, stands out. Sexual diversity organisations have also been present, and have been very active in denouncing femicides and murders of LGBTQI+ people.

    These groups were joined by a middle class made impoverished by the severe impact of the pandemic. There were many middle-class people, many white-collar workers and professionals, in the demonstrations. Many people who did not belong to any Indigenous, student or women’s organisation or collective went out on their own, moved by the feeling of being fed up. Thus, the November 2020 protests were a reflection of both social organisation and citizen autonomy.

    What did the mobilised citizenry demand?

    Despite the fact that several sectors mobilised and many demands accumulated, there was an order to the protests’ petition list. Although each sector had its own demands, they all rallied around a few major ones. The key demand was that the president should veto the budget, since what triggered the mobilisation was the impudence of a Congress that made a budget that was clearly not to the benefit of the citizens of Guatemala but to their own, to feed corruption. The demonstrations were an immediate success in that regard, since a few days after the Congress building was burned, Congress backed down and annulled the budget it had previously approved. Along with the withdrawal of the budget, the protesters’ demand was the drafting of a new budget that would respond to the needs of the population, but this demand is still pending.

    Following the repression of the protests, the resignation of the Minister of the Interior became a key demand, but this did not happen and this public official remains in office. The president’s resignation was also demanded but did not take place.

    Finally, the demand for a new constitution, which has been on the agenda of social movements for several years, was raised again. In 2015, during the big demonstrations that led to the resignation of the entire government, social movements assessed that corruption was not only the fault of some individuals, as we had a corrupt system and therefore a change of system was needed. Indigenous and peasant organisations have their proposal for constitutional change, based on their demand of recognition of Indigenous peoples and the establishment of a plurinational state that would give them autonomy and decision-making power.

    Other groups have more embryonic proposals. I was a member of Congress until January 2020, and when I was still in Congress I worked with women’s organisations, thinking that this situation could arise and we had to be ready. We started the Movement of Women with Constituent Power to develop a proposal for a new constitution from the perspective of women in all our diversity.

    What are the main changes you propose?

    We have a constitution that was drafted in 1985 and it has an important human rights component; it includes the office of the Ombudsman, which at the time was an innovation. But human rights are approached from an individual perspective; collective rights and peoples’ rights are absent, as are the rights of women and LGBTQI+ people. And so are the most advanced innovations in constitutional matters, such as the rights of nature. Ours is a political proposal for the emancipation of peoples, women and sexual diversity. It is based on the idea of an economy for life, which puts the community at the centre, and on a feminist economy that reorganises work and care tasks.

    Do you think the protests will continue?

    Yes, the protests will continue. With the year-end celebrations came demobilisation, but in recent days it has become public that CODECA has decided to take to the streets again. CODECA is an organisation that normally goes out alone, it doesn’t coordinate with other social movements, but it has a great capacity for mobilisation. If they go back on the streets, they will open a new phase of demonstrations.

    Right now, the Minister of Finance is drawing up a new budget, which in a month’s time will have to be discussed again in Congress. It remains to be seen not only how much will be invested in health, education and economic revival, but also what they think ‘economic revival’ actually means. Until now the emphasis has always been on international private investment, which only generates opportunities for greater exploitation and mega-projects. A bill has been proposed to promote family farming; there is no way it can be passed. So the demands of rural populations, peasants and Indigenous peoples are going to continue to be expressed on the streets.

    For the time being, this is a sectoral call, not a broad call to citizens. But it will not take much to revive citizen protest, since after the November demonstrations the president made a series of promises that he has not kept. The first anniversary of his government was 14 January 2021 and the levels of support it receives are extremely low. Congress also has little legitimacy, given the number of representatives who are part of the ‘corrupt pact’, which is large enough to hold an ordinary majority to pass legislation.

    However, people may be afraid of mobilising because we are at a peak in COVID-19 infections. And another obstacle to the continuity of the protests is the absence of a unified leadership and the fact that coordination is quite limited.

    Civic space in Guatemala is rated as ‘obstructed’ by theCIVICUS Monitor.
    Follow@sandramorangt on Twitter.

     

  • GUATEMALA: ‘These elections are key because they give us a chance to take a different path’

    CIVICUS speaks with Jordán Rodas Andrade about Guatemala’s general elections – where a candidate promising reform has surprisingly made the second round of the presidential race – and the prospects for democratic change and opening up civic space.

    Jordán Rodas is a lawyer specialising in constitutional guarantees and fundamental rights, transparency and anti-corruption. In addition to being a university professor, in 2015 he was elected vice-president of the Guatemalan Bar Association and between 2017 and 2022 he was Guatemala’s Human Rights Ombudsman. In exercising this role he was repeatedly criminalised and threatened, as a result of which he had to go into exile.

    How have civic space conditions changed in Guatemala in recent years?

    In recent years there has been a very worrying deterioration of civic space in Guatemala, which has worsened under the current president, Alejandro Giammattei. His predecessor, Jimmy Morales, a comedian-turned-president, left very bad practices in place, but these reached extreme levels under Giammattei.

    In recent years, many human rights defenders, land rights defenders, journalists and justice defenders have had to leave our country, forced by a hostile climate of persecution and criminalisation. This closure of spaces and the absence of an independent press have produced fertile ground for the advance of an authoritarian regime. These elections are key because they give us Guatemalans a chance to take a different path for the good of our country.

    What drove you into exile?

    In my five years as prosecutor, I was criminalised with 18 pretrial proceedings, all of which were rejected. It is exhausting to have to constantly defend yourself against such a succession of spurious accusations. Then I had eight requests for removal from office by members of congress, in addition to a crippling financial suffocation.

    Above all, I have witnessed the weakening of justice. Many had to take the difficult decision to leave the country to save their lives, their freedom or their integrity. Among them are Juan Francisco Sandoval, former head of the Special Prosecutor’s Office against Impunity (FECI), Erika Aifán, an independent judge, Judge Miguel Ángel Gálvez and many others who in one way or another touched the heartstrings of political and economic power.

    It is no coincidence that behind the persecution of justice operators and journalists is often the Foundation Against Terrorism, directed by business leader Ricardo Méndez Ruiz, who has been accused by the US government of acts of corruption and acts against democratic institutions. This organisation was a plaintiff in the criminal proceedings against Virginia Laparra, former FECI prosecutor in Quetzaltenango, who has been in prison for more than a year and who should never have been detained for denouncing cases of corruption of a judge. Whistleblowing is not a crime anywhere in the world.

    The same organisation criminally prosecuted José Rubén Zamora, the founder of newspaper elPeriódico, one of the government’s main critics who for years has denounced corruption. Zamora was recently sentenced to six years in prison for several alleged crimes, including money laundering. This sent a very serious message against press freedom. The independent press has had to self-censor and yet it continues to fight this battle.

    I was still in Guatemala when Zamora was captured, and so I decided to distance myself. I left in August but returned in December, by land, to participate in the assembly of the People’s Liberation Movement (MLP), which proclaimed Thelma Cabrera, an Indigenous Maya Mam woman, as its presidential candidate and myself as its vice-presidential candidate. Four years ago, the MLP came in fourth place, but in a context of social malaise in the face of corruption and thanks to its opening up to mestizo people – people of mixed European and Indigenous heritage – I thought it had a good chance of entering the second-round race.

    But my successor in the prosecutor’s office filed a spurious complaint against me, as a result of which our presidential ticket was blocked. I was systematically refused information about the content of the complaint. In other words, this was used to take us out of the race. Since then, I have continued the struggle from exile. This may not be what you want, but it is what you have to do.

    Under what conditions would you decide to return to Guatemala permanently?

    I was just talking about this last week following a work meeting with the Guatemalan state mediated by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). I have been the beneficiary of a precautionary measure from the IACHR since 2017. These measures establish that the state has the obligation to ensure and guarantee a person’s life, integrity, security and liberty, and in my case the state of Guatemala has not complied with it. In order to return, I would need as the minimum that the state does not persecute or criminalise me.

    There are currently two accusations against me, one filed by the Human Rights Ombudsman’s Office and another by the Comptroller General’s Office. I have no official knowledge of what the accusations are because I don’t have access to the documents; I have requested them through access to information requests. But it seems to me they are related to the fact that in my declaration of assets I said that I had handed over on 20 August, which is when my constitutionally established term ended, but I left the country on 18 August, leaving the deputy attorney general in charge, as the law dictates. In other words, there was no falsehood or crime. This case is under reserve, and I have asked the state, as a sign of goodwill, not to extend this reserve but to hand over a copy of the complaint so I can defend myself, and to guarantee my life and safety, and that of my family in Guatemala.

    Has the fight against corruption in Guatemala failed?

    The fight against corruption has not failed, but it has stalled as a result of a well-thought-out strategy of a corrupt alliance of political officials and private sector actors.

    However, today more than ever I hope that we will learn the painful but positive lessons from the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), which I believe has more lights than shadows. I hope that from that learning we can, sooner rather than later, take up the fight against corruption again.

    International support will continue to be indispensable because our justice system is very porous, permeated by organised crime and lacking institutionality. Three of the nine magistrates of the Supreme Court of Justice and several other judges and judicial officials are on the US State Department’s Engel List of people who have committed acts of corruption or have participated in actions to undermine democracy in their countries. Members of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal have been accused of falsifying their doctoral degrees to get elected and the Human Rights Ombudsman was Giammattei’s human rights officer in the prison system at the time he launched ‘Operation Peacock’, a police operation that resulted in a massacre and eventually cost Giammattei 10 months in prison, but also launched its presidential bid. Hence the trust that exists between these two officials.

    But it is clear that people are tired of all this and they showed it at the ballot box on 25 June, when they said no to a return to the past and yes to a proposal that sends a message of hope for the fight against corruption. This was clearly put by the candidate who represents this hope, Bernardo Arévalo, who made it to the second round against all odds.

    Do you consider these elections to have been free and competitive?

    The presidential election was not free and competitive, because a fair election requires not only that there be no fraud on voting day, but also that a series of elements are present throughout the process, from the moment the elections are called. The election was called on 20 January, and on 27 January the state closed the door on us and prevented our participation. Not only did this violate our right to stand for election, but it also restricted citizens’ right to have a full range of options.

    In reaction to this exclusion, Thelma Cabrera called for a null vote, and numbers don’t lie. The null vote actually won, with 17 per cent, a higher share than that received by the candidate who came first, Sandra Torres, who got around 15 per cent. People are clearly fed up.

    The unfairness of the competition also manifested itself in the official party’s handling of public resources and the government’s extremely close relationship with some Supreme Electoral Tribunal magistrates.

    But the fact that Bernardo Arévalo managed to enter the second round is, alongside the mass of null votes, blank votes and abstentions, a sign of enormous rejection of the system. I have high expectations for the second round, in which I hope that the Guatemalan people will participate massively and take advantage of this opportunity to choose a better future.

    What would Guatemala’s new government need to do to put the country back on the road to democracy?

    Above all, the anti-corruption message must be accompanied by real action. Revenge against justice operators must stop, the rule of law must be restored and the freedom of the independent press must be guaranteed.

    The new president should form a cabinet inclusive of progressive sectors. He should convene political parties, social forces and Indigenous peoples’ movements to jointly make a proposal that ensures public policies benefit those most in need.

    The new government should totally dissociate itself from the malpractices of the past and be very careful about power’s temptations. Its responsibility to those who have placed their trust in it must prevail. There will be temptations along the way, so it is essential that it place its bets on people who are ethical, capable and consistent with the values projected in the electoral campaign, as people voted for them because they recognised them first and foremost as an honest party. Bernardo is surely the most interested in honouring the legacy of his father, former president Juan José Arévalo. His government could become a third government of the revolution, taking up and improving on the great achievements of that democratic springtime that took place between 1944 and 1955.

    ---

    Civic space in Guatemala is rated ‘repressed’ by theCIVICUS Monitor.

    Get in touch with Jordán Rodas through his Facebook or Instagram pages, and follow him on TikTok and Twitter.

  • Guatemala: Las autoridades detienen a Jerson Antonio Morales al tiempo que continúan los ataques contra defensores de los derechos indígenas

    English

    La alianza global de la sociedad civil CIVICUS condenó el arresto y la detención ilegal del periodista y activista de los derechos indígenas Jerson Antonio Xitumul Morales por parte de las autoridades guatemaltecas, el 11 de noviembre de 2017.

  • Harassment and persecution of the voices that denounce the repression in Nicaragua

    By Natalia Gomez Peña is Advocacy & Engagement Officer at CIVICUS

    On Wednesday, December 12, the National Assembly of Nicaragua voted to cancel the legal personality of the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (CENIDH). After the announcement, Vilma Núñez, 80, the president of CENIDH and one of the most recognized human rights defenders in the region, said: "We have done our job with conviction and will continue to do so until Nicaragua is truly free."

    Read on: Open Democracy 

  • HONDURAS: ‘The ruling of the Inter-American Court marks a before and after for LGBTQI+ people’

    CIVICUS speaks with Indyra Mendoza, founder and general coordinator of Red Lésbica Cattrachas (Cattrachas Lesbian Network), a lesbian feminist organisation dedicated to defending the human rights of LGBTQI+ people in Honduras. In March 2021 the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR)made a ruling in the case of Vicky Hernández. Vicky, a trans woman, and human rights defender, was murdered between the night of 28 June and the early morning of 29 June 2009, in the city of San Pedro Sula, Honduras, while a curfew was in force following a coup. Her killing came in a context of enormous discrimination and violence, including by the security forces, against LGBTQI+ people.

    

    What was the process that resulted in the IACtHR ruling? What was the role of Cattrachas?

    Cattrachas Lesbian Network’s Violence Observatory recorded Vicky’s case and immediately identified it as a potential strategic litigation case, as it was one of the first murders of an LGBTQI+ person following the coup d’état.

    Even before the coup, Cattrachas had identified a pattern of non-lethal violence against transgender women by police officers. And while we had already recorded 20 violent deaths of LGBTQI+ people between 1998 and 2008, the killings of transgender women increased after the 2009 coup. The Observatory recorded a total of 15 violent deaths of transgender women, most of which occurred during curfews or states of exception decreed illegally by the government, when state security forces were in absolute control of the streets.

    In Vicky’s case, Cattrachas learned that no autopsy had been performed, so we contacted her family and found out that very few investigative steps had been taken. On 23 December 2012, Cattrachas filed the initial petition for Vicky’s murder with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, a USA-based human rights organisation, later joined in. The Commission issued its merits report, which established that human rights violations had taken place, on 7 December 2018 and sent the case to the IACtHR on 30 April 2019. The public hearing was held on 11 and 12 November 2020. 

    Finally, on 26 March 2021, the IACtHR issued a ruling declaring the State of Honduras responsible for the violation of Vicky’s rights to life, personal integrity, equality and non-discrimination, recognition of legal personality, personal liberty, privacy, freedom of expression and name. It also ruled that the State of Honduras failed to comply with the obligation established in article 7.a of the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment, and Eradication of Violence against Women, also known as the Convention of Belém Do Pará. Additionally, the IACtHR established that Vicky’s death was not investigated with due diligence, and therefore condemned Honduras for the violation of due process, judicial protection and the obligation established in article 7.b of the Convention. Finally, the Court declared that the right to personal integrity of Vicky’s relatives had also been violated. The ruling was notified on 28 June 2021, 12 years after the coup d’état and the transfemicide of Vicky Hernández.

    The resolution of this case was exceptional. What was the reason for this exception?

    Its resolution was exceptional because of the multiple intersectionalities of violence present in Vicky’s life. Vicky was a young Honduran transgender woman and human rights defender, a sex worker living with HIV, with limited economic resources, and at some point in her life, precarious employment had forced her to emigrate. Vicky’s is the first case of lethal violence against an LGBTQI+ person that occurred at the intersection of two relevant contexts: the 2009 coup d’état and the context of structural violence that LGBTQI+ people, and particularly transgender women, face in Honduras.

    The case allowed the Court to reiterate standards on the right to gender identity, equality, and non-discrimination, and to insist that, in contexts of historical violence, subordination, and discrimination, in this case against transgender people, international commitments impose a reinforced responsibility on the state. Furthermore, through an evolutionary interpretation, the Court established that transgender women are women, and are therefore protected by the Convention of Belém Do Pará.

    What is the significance of this ruling for LGBTQI+ people in Honduras?

    The ruling in Vicky’s case marks a before and after, as it establishes guarantees of non-repetition that must be turned into public policy in favour of LGBTQI+ people.

    The measures set by the ruling include the establishment of an educational scholarship for transgender persons, which will bear the name of Vicky Hernández, the implementation of education, awareness-raising and training plan for the Honduran security forces, the adoption of protocols for the diagnosis, data collection, monitoring and investigation of cases of violence against LGBTQI+ people, and the adoption of a procedure to recognise gender identity in identity papers and public records. This procedure should be guided by the standards of Advisory Opinion 24/17, which implies that it should not require any law, should be expeditious, should not require pathologising tests, should not require a historical record of changes, and should be, as far as possible, free of charge.

    More than a decade after the murder of Vicky Hernández, what is the situation of LGBTQI+ people in Honduras?

    LGBTQI+ people in Honduras face constitutional and legal limitations based on sexual orientation, gender expression and gender identity that prohibit us from accessing equal marriage as well as the recognition of marriage celebrated abroad, de facto union, adoption, intimate visits in prisons, change of name based on gender identity and blood donation. Specifically, in relation to changing names, the IACtHR ruling in Vicky’s case mandates the state to establish an adequate and effective procedure to recognise the identity of transgender people.

    Honduras is the country with the highest rate of violent deaths of LGBTQI+ people in Latin America and the Caribbean. Since the transfemicide of Vicky, to date 388 LGBTQI+ people have been murdered in Honduras and one person is missing; 221 of those people are gay, 112 are transgender and 46 are lesbian. Only 83 cases have been prosecuted, resulting in 11 acquittals and 34 convictions, which reflects a 91 percent impunity rate.

    In sum, LGBTQI+ people face not only major legal obstacles but also a very high level of lethal violence and lack of access to justice.

    Civic space in Honduras is rated ‘repressed’ by theCIVICUS Monitor.

    Get in touch with Cattrachas through itswebsite orFacebook page, and follow@CATTRACHAS on Twitter. 

  • HONDURAS: ‘We must address the roots of the conflict: the handing over of natural resources’

    CIVICUS speaks about the criminalisation of environmental, land and territorial defenders in Honduras with Edy Tábora, director of the law firm Justicia para los Pueblos (Justice for the Peoples) and coordinator of the group of defence lawyers of eight defenders of the Guapinol river who were recently released from detention.

    Why were the Guapinol defenders criminalised?

    The case of the eight Guapinol comrades deprived of their freedom is one of the most revealing expressions of the conflicts around mining and energy and the dispossession of land and natural resources in Honduras. Along with that of Berta Cáceres, the Guapinol case is one of the most significant ones.

    Berta’s case, which culminated in her assassination, was the first in a new wave of criminalisation surrounding dispossession projects following the 2009 military coup. Her case displayed all the typical elements: stigmatisation, surveillance, rupture of the social fabric, criminalisation. The same pattern can be seen in many parts of Honduras.

    After the coup, there was a privately conducted exploration of mineral deposits and businesspeople realised there was a lot of money to be made here. In the case of Guapinol, the process kicked off with the granting of an iron oxide mining concession – one of the largest in the country – to Los Pinares, a holding company registered in Panama, owned by an extremely wealthy Honduran family. Its mining business was developed jointly with the US company Nucor.

    Nucor claims to have withdrawn from the project in late 2019 due to the conflict triggered by the criminalisation of the Guapinol defenders, but there is no evidence of this and we do not believe it to be true. Los Pinares is simply the mining arm of a company whose power comes from airport concessions at home and abroad. It is a company with high-level political connections, and with so much power that in 2013 it succeeded in getting the National Congress to change the delimitation of the core zone of a national park.

    On 22 April 2013, the day before a new mining law came into force, applications were submitted for the two mining concessions related to the Guapinol case, both located in the core zone of the Montaña de Botaderos National Park. This had been declared a national park in 2012, as part of a ‘friendly settlement’ with the relatives of Carlos Escaleras, a social leader and environmental defender active in the 1980s and 1990s, who was assassinated for defending this mountain. The statute of the national park, which bears the name of Carlos Escaleras, prohibited the granting of mining concessions in its core zone and even its buffer zone.

    However, in 2014, engineers began to arrive on the mountain to collect information and check how deep down metal was deposited. People noticed this, began to demand an explanation and organised in the Municipal Committee of Public and Common Goods of Tocoa.

    In June 2016 they began to file complaints; some were filed by the Guapinol defenders who ended up in prison. They requested information from the institutions in charge of granting mining permits but only obtained some information in November 2019, after three years of back and forth. Tired of not getting answers, in June 2018 people started protesting at the Municipality of Tocoa Colón. It was then that systematic surveillance by the national police and Los Pinares security began.

    In August 2018, the Honduran Council of Private Enterprise held press conferences in which it complained to the government about an alleged loss of 20 billion dollars caused by ‘vandals’ protesting in various parts of Honduras.

    Criminalisation was a nationwide strategy, but the criminalisation of the Guapinol comrades was the most serious case. On 8 September 2018, the Public Prosecutor’s Office presented the first accusation against 18 comrades for the crimes of usurpation, damage and usurpation of public space. Los Pinares appeared in the hearings as the accuser. Fourteen comrades were put on trial and all their cases were closed, but the fact that they were accused enabled the illegal eviction, in October 2018, of the Camp for Water and Life, one of many set up around Honduras. This was one of four charges brought by the Public Prosecutor’s Office as part of the strategy to criminalise resistance movements against mining and energy projects.

    In January 2019, in response to a complaint filed by Los Pinares, the Public Prosecutor’s Office filed another indictment against 32 people, including eight Guapinol comrades. The nature of the charges changed: it was no longer about usurpation of public space but about organised crime. Human rights defenders were now treated as taking part in organised crime, with charges including criminal association, theft, damage, unjust deprivation of liberty and aggravated arson. The case was assigned to the Specialised Court for Organised Crime, which meant it was transferred from local to national jurisdiction, in violation of the right to be tried by one’s natural judge. 

    Of the 32, a first group voluntarily submitted to trial in February 2019 and was kept in prison for only 10 days before the accusations against them were dismissed. The Guapinol eight, however, despite having voluntarily submitted to trial, were subjected to arbitrary detention from 26 August 2019 until 24 February 2022, when they finally regained their freedom.

    What did civil society do to secure their release?

    During the pandemic, Guapinol was one of the most high-profile cases globally. Not even the pandemic could stop our comrades’ defence. We quickly moved our activities online, and by late April 2020 we were already filing habeas corpus writs for our comrades’ right to health, alongside international organisations. Even under these conditions, we managed to set up discussions with important organisations, and three months after the pandemic began, we restarted our advocacy work, which meant that by the time the trial started, the case had become very well known around the world.

    Initially the case was promoted by the Coalition Against Impunity, which brings together more than 50 Honduran civil society organisations (CSOs). Later, many CSOs joined a kind of international support group for the case.

    First, we publicly denounced the violence and criminalisation against the Municipal Committee. Second, before our comrades were imprisoned, we documented the irregular granting of concessions for natural resources. Third, alongside several Honduran CSOs, we organised our comrades’ legal defence. A working group was then organised including national and international CSOs to support the defence. A lot of advocacy work was done, both nationally and internationally, to convince the public that this was a very important case and to counter the company’s account of the violence allegedly committed by our comrades.

    Documentary and testimonial work was crucial to expose our comrades’ real activism. We had many meetings with international CSOs. Canadian, US and European organisations and academics reported on the concession and the legal process. International CSOs filed amicus curiae – friend of the court – briefs with Honduran courts. We participated in multiple forums with national and international organisations.

    Many actions converged to create a powerful wave of demands for our comrades’ release. CIVICUS’s and Amnesty International’s campaigns, for example, allowed us to reach wider audiences. When the trial came, the case was widely known, and less than 24 hours after the end of the trial, in which our comrades were convicted with two thirds of the court’s votes, the Supreme Court of Justice annulled the whole process and ordered them to be released.

    This was an unprecedented decision, surely motivated by the strength of the demand for their freedom and by the evidence presented, both in and out of court, which demonstrated that our comrades were innocent and that they fight for a just cause that is of great interest to humanity.

    Are there other cases like the Guapinol case in Honduras?

    There are many defenders criminalised for defending land, including some from the Garífuna people, a marginalised minority, but they are not in prison. Many comrades were also imprisoned for defending democracy in the aftermath of 2017’s electoral fraud: around 30 people were imprisoned in maximum security prisons, but they are currently free. Most pending cases are being closed as a result of an amnesty issued by the National Congress in February 2022.

    In that sense, the Guapinol case was an exception, because this amnesty did not apply to them. What’s important about this case is that we managed to close the process by defending ourselves even with the highly questionable tools offered by the Honduran judicial system.

    However, there were other cases at the same time as Guapinol, such as that of the Indigenous comrades of the Lenca people in the department of La Paz, who were accused of forced displacement. They were imprisoned for more than a year for a crime that is the craziest thing I have ever heard: they were accused of displacing landowners. The Public Prosecutor’s narrative uses the made-up concept of ‘reverse racism’, according to which Indigenous peoples can also commit discrimination against minorities within their communities – the minority in this case being the landowners.

    Do you view Guapinol as part of a pattern of criminalisation against environmental defenders?

    We have detected patterns of criminalisation by sector in the cases we have monitored. For example, between 2011 and 2016 one of the most criminalised sectors was the student movement mobilised in defence of public education. Some 350 students, mostly university students, were criminalised.

    In the case of environmental defenders, we were able to document several patterns of criminalisation. Again and again, prosecutions were initiated only a few days after pronouncements by companies or employers’ organisations. The behaviour of the police and the Public Prosecutor’s Office has also been similar in all cases, with an initial focus on eviction and accusations changing over time following the same pattern. The narrative peddled by companies is always the same as well, often because they share the same lawyers.

    Criminalisation follows different patterns depending on the interests affected. The crimes people are accused of when challenging mining interests differ from those used to dispossess communities of land for the construction of tourism megaprojects or the plantation of African palm in the Atlantic zone, and from those used against peasants claiming access to land and crops.

    However, all the groups criminalised over the past 15 years have something in common: their resistance to the project, promoted since the 2000s, of handing over natural resources to private companies. Land grabbing was politically supported the state following the coup: from that moment on, national regulations were made more flexible to facilitate dispossession and the national police and the security forces of the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the judiciary were placed at the service of the private sector, which used them to criminalise land rights defenders.

    Has there been any improvement in the situation of environmental defenders since the new government came to power in January 2022?

    The new government brought several positive changes. First, while we had already achieved the closure of several emblematic cases, it decreed an amnesty that resulted in the closure of most legal proceedings against defenders, although there are still some cases pending.

    Second, the new government has put an end to the state’s stigmatisation of land struggles, which used to make use of information obtained by state security forces. And third, for the time being the government has not tackled conflicts with violence. People who protest are not being repressed.

    In recent years state violence was deployed to manage social protest, private violence was reflected in the assassination of defenders, and hybrid violence was seen in the area of surveillance. Over the four years of the current government we may no longer witness violent management of social protests, but there is a chance that state violence will be replaced by private corporate violence.

    What are the challenges ahead?

    The challenge right now is to address the causes of criminalisation. We have worked to defend and support our comrades criminalised by the state and private companies, but we have never been able to address what’s at the root of the conflict: the handing over of natural resources. Preventing the criminalisation of defenders is a big step, but we must address the issue of concessions, which in fact continue. Approved projects are waiting to be implemented. If we don’t seize the moment to address this problem, then when the government’s political colour changes, private companies will come back stronger and criminalisation will intensify.

    Moreover, social movements are worn out after 12 years of resistance against the handing over of natural resources. There must be accountability, reparations for victims and guarantees of legal security for defenders to be able to do their work. The hostile legal framework for exercising rights and defending human rights that has been established in recent decades must be reversed.

    Civic space in Honduras is rated ‘repressed’ by theCIVICUS Monitor.
    Learn more about the Guapinol case on itswebsite and follow@Edy_Tabora on Twitter.

  • Honduras: Adoption of Universal Periodic Review on Human Rights

    Statement at the 46th Session of the UN Human Rights Council

    Universal Periodic Review on Human Rights -- Outcome Adoption for Honduras

    ---

    Thank you, Mr President.

    The Association of Non-Governmental Organisations, CIVICUS and RedLad welcome the government of Honduras’ engagement with the UPR process. However, our joint UPR submission documents that since its previous review Honduras has not implemented 19 of the 30 recommendations it received relating to space for civil society, and has only partially implemented eight.

    As detailed in our submission, Honduran legislation restricts workers’ freedom of association. Additionally, the enjoyment of this freedom by activists working on politically sensitive issues is limited in practice, often as a result of the intervention of non-state actors. There was positive change in the legal framework for civil society, but the work of CSOs continued to be undermined by extra-legal factors. Action by indigenous people’s rights, environmental and land rights defenders, as well as students and LGBTQI+ HRDs, is also hampered through criminalisation, criminal prosecution, harassment and surveillance. Although Honduras established a protection mechanism for HRDs and journalists, it failed to ensure its effectiveness. Persistently high levels of violence make Honduras one of the most dangerous countries in the world for HRDs and journalists.

    As also documented in our submission, the 2019 Criminal Code maintained the crimes of slander and insult, which continued to be used against journalists, and the right to access information enshrined by law continued to be restricted by the so-called Law of Official Secrets.

    The exercise of freedom of peaceful assembly remained subjected to de facto and legal barriers. Peaceful demonstrations, particularly by student, indigenous, peasant and environmental movements, were often arbitrarily dissolved with excessive force, typically leading to people being arrested or injured, and occasionally resulting in fatalities. A legal vacuum persists regarding the accountability of the security forces for abuses committed against peaceful protesters.

    We welcome recommendations made to Honduras in this cycle to address these concerns and we call on the Government of Honduras to take proactive measures to implement these recommendations to create and maintain, in law and in practice, an enabling environment for civil society. We further call on the States who made such recommendations to ensure follow-up on their implementation.

    We thank you.

    ---

     Civic space in Honduras is rated as Repressed by the CIVICUS Monitor

  • La sociedad civil de América Latina y el Caribe presiona por un acuerdo vinculante sobre acceso a la información y derechos ambientales

    English

    CIVICUS conversa con Andrés Nápoli, abogado especializado en derecho ambiental y Director Ejecutivo de la Fundación Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (FARN). Fundada en 1985, FARN es una organización de la sociedad civil dedicada a impulsar el desarrollo sustentable. Con énfasis en la participación ciudadana, FARN promueveuna ciudadanía ambiental inclusiva, el desarrollo y la implementación de herramientas para mejorar la transparencia de las políticas públicas y el acceso a la información en materia ambiental. Además construye y lidera redes y alianzas en espacios colaborativos y estratégicos de conocimiento.

    Hace unos días se desarrolló en Buenos Aires una nueva ronda de negociaciones en pos de la adopción de un tratado sobre desarrollo sostenible para América Latina y el Caribe. ¿Cuáles serían los contenidos de este tratado, y qué rol está desempeñando la sociedad civil en el proceso?

    Este es un acuerdo de negociación que se conoce como “acuerdo por el principio 10”, en referencia al principio 10 de la Declaración de Río sobre el Medio Ambiente y el Desarrollo (1992), que garantiza el acceso a la información, a la participación en la toma de decisiones en materia ambiental y a la justicia de todos los actores afectados.

    A partir de esa declaración y de un proceso similar que se dio en Europa y que ya a fines de los ‘90 resultó en la Convención de Aarhus, diez países de América Latina y el Caribe iniciaron negociaciones en la Conferencia de las Naciones Unidas sobre el Desarrollo Sostenible, conocida como Río+20, que tuvo lugar en Río de Janeiro en junio de 2012. Lo que buscaban era un acuerdo, un instrumento regional, para garantizar el acceso a la información sobre medio ambiente y que los ciudadanos tengan la posibilidad de participar en procesos de toma de decisiones que puedan afectar su calidad de vida o el ambiente y tener acceso efectivo a procedimientos judiciales y administrativos, por ejemplo para reparar daños.

    Durante varios años el proceso fue avanzando mediante una serie de reuniones de puntos focales, hasta que finalmente en el año 2015 se dio inicio al proceso de negociación. Los países involucrados actualmente son 24. El proceso es apoyado, en calidad de Secretaría Técnica, por la CEPAL (Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe), un organismo que integra el sistema de las Naciones Unidas y que ha tenido un rol muy activo.

    El proceso tiene una característica muy peculiar: sigue el modelo establecido en la Convención de Aarhus, que tenía el objetivo de consolidar los procesos democráticos en Europa del Este y que para ello contempló la incorporación activa de la sociedad civil. Así, el proceso actualmente en curso en nuestra región también establece mecanismos para la participación activa de la sociedad civil, la que cuenta con representantes en el Comité de Negociación que integran los representantes de los países. La sociedad civil cuenta con dos representantes electos por sus pares que debaten e intercambian ideas en la mesa de negociación del Convenio. Pueden incluso proponer texto para incorporar en el instrumento, el cual es incorporado si obtiene el apoyo de al menos uno de los países.

    ¿Cómo fueron seleccionados los representantes de la sociedad civil? ¿Ha trabajado la sociedad civil en alianzas o redes?

    Los representantes de la sociedad civil (a la que en este proceso se denomina “público”) fueron electos en una votación realizada por medios electrónicos y en la que participaron los miembros del público que se encontraban inscriptos en el proceso al inicio de la negociación. Resultaron electos como titulares las representantes de la sociedad civil de Chile y Jamaica. En mi caso resulté electo como miembro alterno, junto con otros cuatro representantes de diversos países de la región.

    Los representantes de la sociedad civil establecimos una red por medio de la cual desarrollamos nuestra tarea de manera articulada y conjunta. Contamos además con diferentes voceros en el proceso de negociación, como así también con el asesoramiento de expertos de países de la región y de Aarhus.

    ¿Ha habido desacuerdos importantes entre sociedad civil y estados en el curso de las negociaciones?

    El proceso de negociación debería terminar a fines de este año, y si eso no se consigue habría alguna reunión más el año que viene. Se está negociando un texto propuesto por la Secretaría Técnica y sobre la base del cual se ha ido avanzando. Las negociaciones están entrando en su fase final.

    Pero ha habido muchas idas y vueltas, y hay cosas importantes que aún no están definidas. Un tema en que la sociedad civil ha venido insistiendo, y sobre el cual hay una decisión cada vez más firme, es que el acuerdo debe tener carácter vinculante, vale decir que debe obligar a los países que formen parte del mismo. En tal sentido, entendemos que un acuerdo basado en derechos no puede admitir otro carácter. No queremos que este proceso sea una nueva declaración de principios, o una suerte de Ley Modelo: queremos un acuerdo que obligue a los países a establecer e implementar ciertos mecanismos efectivos de participación y acceso a la información en materia ambiental, como así también un amplio acceso a la justicia para reclamar la protección y tutela del derecho a gozar del ambiente.

    Varios países se han pronunciado a favor de esta posición: entre ellos se cuentan Chile, Costa Rica, Panamá y Paraguay; también Argentina se expresó en ese sentido en la última reunión. Otros países sin embargo todavía no se han pronunciado en ese sentido, pero negocian el acuerdo como si fuera a adoptarse un mecanismo de carácter vinculante.

    Sin embargo, nosotros creemos que hay ciertos países que no están negociando de buena fe el acuerdo. Ante todo, aún no se han pronunciado sobre si van a firmar el documento, ni sobre si aceptan que se trate de un acuerdo vinculante. Además, varios de esos mismos países negocian el acuerdo buscando bajar sistemáticamente los estándares de protección de derechos a establecer en el acuerdo, en algunos casos incluso fijando estándares más bajos que los que establecen sus propias legislaciones nacionales.

    Estos intentos de bajar los estándares y garantías llevaron a que se generaran muchas discusiones que han prolongado por demás los plazos de las negociaciones y al mismo tiempo han generado un creciente malestar en los representantes de la sociedad civil.  Esto se ha visto muy claramente en temas de acceso a información pública, donde se han establecido numerosas barreras que tornarán mas dificultoso al ciudadano acceder a la información en poder del estado.

    De hecho, en la última reunión en Buenos Aires se planteó la posibilidad de que la sociedad civil abandonara el proceso si esta actitud persistía. Pero esto fue más que nada un llamado de atención para los negociadores: como sociedad civil trazamos un límite a la discusión, por debajo del cual ya no estaremos dispuestos a permanecer.

    Esperamos que en la próxima reunión, que se va a hacer en Chile cerca de fin de año y en la cual se van a abordar las cuestiones referidas al acceso a la justicia, los estándares de los países se mantengan elevados. Caso contrario, va a ser muy difícil que aquellos países que ya tienen buenos estándares en sus legislaciones mejoren su cumplimiento.

    ¿Por qué es importante la participación de las sociedad civil? ¿Qué diferencia hace su presencia en estos foros?

    La participación de la sociedad civil es muy importante no solo porque legitima los procesos de negociación; también permite que haya mayores niveles de apertura y transparencia. Lo que es más importante, la sociedad civil trae a la mesa de negociaciones muchos de los temas que los estados no están dispuestos a tratar, aporta una perspectiva que va más allá de los intereses estrechos de los estados y al mismo tiempo busca que se eleven los estándares exigidos de protección de derechos. Cuando hay transparencia y la atención pública está puesta en estos procesos, es mucho más difícil para los estados negarse a abordar estas discusiones.

    Un ejemplo de los temas que se han impuesto por la impronta de la sociedad civil es el de la situación por la que atraviesan los defensores ambientales y de derechos humanos en la región y la necesidad de establecer garantías para que puedan llevar a cabo su labor sin sufrir amenazas y atentados, que a muchos les han costado la vida.

    América Latina es la región del mundo con mayor cantidad de asesinatos de activistas ambientalistas. Nosotros creemos que el Acuerdo por el Principio 10 debe contener mecanismos que posibiliten la prevención y la protección efectiva de los defensores ambientales.

    Hay incontables conflictos ambientales abiertos en toda América Latina y el Caribe, asociados a muchísimas violaciones de los derechos humanos, y por el momento no hay mecanismos institucionalizados de negociación entre los estados y las comunidades afectadas. El acuerdo por el Principio 10 puede ser una muy buena herramienta para canalizarlos.

    Como lo muestran numerosos informes publicados recientemente por CIVICUS, PWYP, Global Witness y Front Line Defenders, la sociedad civil que se ocupa del medio ambiente y los recursos naturales enfrenta amenazas crecientes. ¿Qué se puede hacer frente a estas amenazas?

    Efectivamente, América Latina es la región más problemática en materia de garantía de los derechos de los defensores ambientales. Un caso emblemático ha sido el de Berta Cáceres, pero lamentablemente no se trata de un caso único sino que ha habido centenares de defensores asesinados en Brasil, Colombia, Honduras, Perú, Paraguay, México, Nicaragua y Guatemala, entre otros países. En la mayoría de estos procesos están involucradas grandes inversiones, tanto en la lucha contra las mega represas hidroeléctricas como en el avance de la frontera agropecuaria o de la explotación minera. En esos contextos, los defensores ambientales, que son los que trabajan codo a codo con las comunidades afectadas, ven peligrar sus derechos e incluso su integridad física y su propia vida.

    Frente a esto se requieren garantías y salvaguardas fuertemente expresadas por los estados, pero no solamente cuando suceden los ataques sino a manera de prevención, para garantizar el ejercicio legítimo del derecho a defender derechos que están expresando estos defensores ambientales. Muchos de nosotros tenemos la suerte y el privilegio de trabajar desde las capitales, pero los defensores ambientales están junto con los grupos de poblaciones afectadas cuando suceden, por ejemplo, las ocupaciones de tierras por parte de las empresas extractivas o cuando ocurren los desplazamientos del territorio de las poblaciones que lo habitan, que es cuando ocurren las peores violaciones de derechos humanos. De ahí la necesidad de que haya instrumentos internacionales y políticas activas de prevención y protección para estos defensores.

    ¿Qué tendencias, positivas o negativas, observa en materia de participación de la sociedad civil en procesos de toma de decisiones?

    Hay una tendencia que yo creo que es irreversible: la discusión entre estados, con exclusión de la sociedad civil, no ha dado muchos resultados ni tiene mucho futuro. Sin embargo, estos procesos no son lineales; muchas veces se avanza en algunos espacios mientras que se retrocede en otros. Este proceso es un buen ejemplo de que la participación activa de la sociedad civil dentro del proceso puede ser virtuosa y que los acuerdos son posibles; también muestra que se requiere de tiempo, conocimientos y, sobre todo, se requiere ganar confianza.

    Al mismo tiempo, estos procesos ponen en evidencia que muchos países “hacen como que” participan, “hacen como que” informan, pero esto es ficticio. Muchos países garantizan los derechos en sus legislaciones pero fracasan en su implementación. De ahí que nuestras luchas se centren en garantizar el efectivo cumplimiento de los derechos.

    ¿Qué recursos necesita la sociedad civil para fortalecerse y responder mejor a los desafíos que enfrenta?

    Sobre este punto volvería a referir otra vez al tema con que iniciamos esta conversación: las negociaciones por el Principio 10. Este es un proceso abierto para toda la sociedad civil de América Latina y el Caribe, de modo que quiero hacer un pedido directo a toda la sociedad civil, no solamente a organizaciones sino también a personas individuales, profesionales en diversas áreas, para que se informen y tengan una participación activa en este proceso. Eso se puede hacer de manera muy sencilla, para lo cual hay primero que registrase en el proceso en www.cepal.org/es/register/p10. La idea es que el proceso pueda crecer cada vez más a través de una buena comunidad de participantes que contribuya a consolidarlo.

    En términos de fortalecimiento de la sociedad civil, es muy importante que cada uno atienda a los temas que son de su interés y especialidad, pero que también podamos entre todos elegir temas para trabajar en conjunto. El trabajo colectivo fortalece cada uno de los reclamos y cada una de las luchas. En este sentido la sociedad civil siempre tiene elementos para aportar y para construir agenda. Esta agenda no se realiza en el corto plazo: hay que sostenerla en el tiempo. Por eso es bueno trabajarla en forma colectiva, de modo que el día en que uno no puede sostenerla, otro pueda hacerlo en su lugar y que el proceso no se detenga.

    En relación con los derechos que defienden organizaciones como la nuestra, ningún resultado de interés público y de interés colectivo se obtiene en el corto plazo. Se requiere continuidad en el tiempo y, por lo tanto, trabajo colectivo. Apostamos a que estas luchas por los derechos humanos, el desarrollo sostenible y un medio ambiente sano se consoliden en instrumentos internacionales y formen un círculo virtuoso, en la medida en que cada vez más ciudadanos se movilicen, se informen y participen en el proceso de toma de decisiones, y que en ese proceso se generen más y mejores mecanismos institucionales y legales que garanticen esos mismos derechos de movilización, acceso a la información y participación a nivel tanto nacional como internacional mayores serán los resultados que se obtendrán en estos procesos.

    El espacio cívico en Argentina es clasificado en elCIVICUS Monitor en la categoría “estrecho”.

    Visite elsitio web o el perfil deFacebook de FARN, o siga en Twitter a @farnargentina o a @andresnapoli.

  • Latin America | The Escazú Agreement: a light of hope for those standing up for the environment

    By Natalia Gomez Peña, Advocacy & Network Engagement Officer, CIVICUS

    In Latin America, environmental activists risk their lives as a consequence of the vital work they do. In a significant step toward their protection, States in Latin America and the Caribbean have adopted a regional agreement known as the Escazú Agreement to fight against the spiral of violence against environmental defenders.

    Read on: International Service for Human Rigths 

  • MEXICO: ‘Alliances, public debate & diversification of voices are indispensable in the struggle to expand rights’

    CIVICUS speaks with Verónica Esparza and Rebeca Lorea, respectively lawyer and researcher and Public Policy Advocacy Coordinator at Information Group on Reproductive Choice (GIRE, Grupo de Información en Reproducción Elegida), about the significance of recent Supreme Court rulings on abortion rights, and sexual and reproductive rights in Mexico. GIRE is a feminist and human rights organisation that has been active for almost 30 years to ensure that women and others with the capacity to bear children can exercise their reproductive rights.

     From left to right: Verónica Esparza & Rebeca Lorea
    

    What is the situation of sexual and reproductive rights in Mexico?

    Currently, women and other people with the capacity to bear children do not find optimal conditions in Mexico to decide about their reproductive life: there are a high number of pregnant girls and adolescents, affected by a serious context of sexual violence that the state continues to fail to remedy; obstacles to access services such as emergency contraception and abortion in cases of rape; the criminalisation of women and other pregnant people who have abortions; daily obstetric violence during pregnancy, childbirth and postpartum; and women who die in childbirth from preventable causes.

    The structural failures of the health system are compounded by the fact that the majority of people in Mexico are employed in the informal sector, which limits their access to social security and therefore to benefits such as maternity leave and childcare. Women, who continue to play the biggest role in household and care work, bear the brunt of this lack of access to services, which particularly affects those who experience multiple discriminations, such as girls and adolescents, Indigenous women and people with disabilities.

    What does GIRE understand reproductive justice to mean, and how do you work to advance it?

    GIRE understands reproductive justice as the set of social, political and economic factors that give women and others who can get pregnant power and self-determination over their reproductive life. To achieve this, it is essential for the state to guarantee these people’s human rights, taking into account the discrimination and structural inequalities that affect their health, rights and control over their lives, and for it to generate optimal conditions for autonomous decision-making.

    It is no longer sufficient to understand reproductive rights in terms of legally defined individual freedoms, while ignoring the barriers that limit the effective access of certain populations to these rights. Reproductive justice is a more inclusive analytical framework because it links reproductive rights to the social, political and economic inequalities that affect people’s ability to access reproductive health services and effectively exercise their reproductive rights.

    GIRE has worked for almost 30 years to defend and promote reproductive justice in Mexico, making visible the normative and structural obstacles that women and others with the capacity to bear children face in fully exercising their human rights, and promoting change through a comprehensive strategy that includes legal support, communications, the demand for comprehensive reparation for violations of reproductive rights, including non-repetition guarantees at both the federal and local levels, and the collection of data to feed into our work.

    Our priority issues are contraception, abortion, obstetric violence, maternal death, assisted reproduction and work-life balance. While we focus on sex and gender discrimination faced by women and girls in Mexico, our quest for reproductive justice recognises that these variables intersect with other forms of discrimination, such as class, age, disability and ethnicity. In addition, we recognise that the discrimination faced by women and others with reproductive capacity affects not only them, but also their communities, and particularly their families.

    What is the significance of the two recent Supreme Court rulings on reproductive rights?

    In the struggle for legal, safe and free abortion in Mexico, the National Supreme Court of Justice (SCJN) has played a fundamental role. Since 2007 it has issued several rulings recognising access to abortion as a human rights matter.

    In April 2018, the SCJN granted amparos – constitutional protection lawsuits – to two young female rape victims in cases that GIRE had brought forward. The two women had been denied abortions by public health services in Morelos and Oaxaca despite the fact that this is a right for victims of sexual violence. The Court stated that this denial constituted a violation of the women’s human rights and that health authorities are obliged to respond immediately and efficiently to these requests, so as not to allow the consequences of the rape to continue over time. This implies that health authorities cannot implement internal mechanisms or policies that hinder or delay the realisation of this right. With these rulings, the SCJN reaffirmed the legal obligation of health service providers to guarantee access to abortion in cases of rape.

    On 15 May 2019, in another case promoted by GIRE, the SCJN granted an amparo to a woman who had been denied an abortion despite the fact that continuing her pregnancy could cause her serious health complications. With this ruling, the SCJN recognised that the right to health includes access to abortion and ruled on the particular reproductive health service needs of women, highlighting the serious consequences of denial of termination of pregnancy for health reasons.

    On 7 July 2021, the First Chamber of the SCJN ruled on another case joined by GIRE, of a young woman with cerebral palsy and severe limitations on her ability to carry out tasks essential to daily life, which were aggravated by a precarious economic environment. As a result of a seizure, her family had taken her to a hospital in Chiapas, where they were informed that she was 23 weeks pregnant. The pregnancy had been the result of rape when she was 17 years old. A request was made to terminate the pregnancy, but the hospital director rejected the request on the grounds that the 90-day gestation deadline established by the state penal code had passed. The SCJN pointed out that this time limit ignored the nature of sexual aggression and its consequences on women’s health, and reflected a total disregard for the human dignity and autonomy of a woman whose pregnancy, far from the result of a free and consensual decision, was the result of an arbitrary and violent act.

    Finally, in September 2021, the Plenary of the SCJN analysed two pieces of legislation that had a negative impact on the right to choose by women and others with the capacity to become pregnant. First, it analysed an action of unconstitutionality (148/2017) on the criminal legislation of the state of Coahuila, which the Attorney General’s Office had considered to be in violation of women’s human rights for classifying abortion as a crime.

    In a landmark ruling, on 7 September the SCJN unanimously decided that the absolute criminalisation of abortion is unconstitutional; it became the first constitutional court in the region to issue such ruling. The SCJN pointed out that, although the product of pregnancy deserves protection that increases as the pregnancy progresses, this protection cannot disregard the rights of women and other pregnant persons to reproductive freedom, enshrined in article 4 of the Constitution. In other words, it ruled the absolute criminalisation of abortion to be unconstitutional.

    This ruling had several implications. Firstly, the Congress of the state of Coahuila will have to reform its criminal legislation to decriminalise consensual abortion. Secondly, it establishes a precedent, meaning that the central arguments of the ruling must now be applied by all judges in Mexico, both federal and local. From now on, when deciding future cases, they will have to consider as unconstitutional the criminal laws of all the federal entities that criminalise abortion in an absolute manner. In addition, the congresses of the states where voluntary abortion is still restricted and punished now have a set of criteria endorsed by the SCJN to act to decriminalise it.

    In the same week, the Court also analysed actions of unconstitutionality (106 and 107/2018) on the recognition of the ‘right to life from conception’ established in the Constitution of Sinaloa. These actions had been promoted by a legislative minority and the National Human Rights Commission. Unanimously, the SCJN considered that the states do not have the competence to define the origin of human life and the concepts of personhood and right-holding status, which is the exclusive domain of the National Constitution. Furthermore, it considered that personhood cannot be granted to an embryo or foetus and then be used as the basis for the adoption of measures restricting the reproductive autonomy of women and other pregnant persons; this is unconstitutional.

    Based on precedents set by both the Supreme Court and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the SCJN established that the main efforts of the state to protect life in gestation as a constitutionally valuable good should be directed towards effectively protecting the rights of women and other pregnant persons, guaranteeing the rights of those continuing pregnancies they desire, providing the necessary conditions for dignified births, without obstetric violence, and eradicating the causes that provoke maternal deaths.

    What are the prospects for achieving legal, safe and free abortion in all of Mexico in the near future?

    In Mexico as in the region, there have been several successes over the past decade in the struggle for access to legal, safe and free abortion, although many barriers and challenges persist.

    In our country strong stigma still prevails around abortion, based on the idea of motherhood as women’s inevitable fate. This idea continues to permeate all state institutions and laws, and forms the basis for not only the social but also the legal criminalisation of abortion, which particularly affects women and other pregnant persons living in situations of violence, economic marginalisation and lack of access to reproductive information. It also sends the strong message that the state plays a role in reproductive decisions that should belong to the private sphere.

    In most of Mexico, as in Latin America, voluntary abortion is still considered a crime. For decades, feminist activists, collectives and organisations have pushed for the repeal of these laws, pointing out that consensual abortion is part of the reproductive life of women and others with the capacity to bear children, and that criminalisation does not inhibit its practice but rather means that in certain contexts it will be carried out in an unsafe manner.

    From the 1970s onwards, Mexican feminists have raised the issue of access to abortion as a matter of social justice and public health and as a democratic aspiration. Despite the forcefulness of their arguments, it took 35 years to achieve – and only in Mexico City – the decriminalisation of abortion during the first trimester of pregnancy. That victory was replicated more than a decade later in three states: Oaxaca, Hidalgo and Veracruz.

    In the short term, achieving decriminalisation at the national level is complicated because each of the 32 federal entities has its own penal code, so it would still be necessary for each state to reform its penal and health legislation to stop considering abortion as a crime and then recognise it as a health service and provide public institutions with the human and financial resources to ensure access.

    In practice, in recent years both the narrative and the reality of abortion in Mexico have changed due to the increasing prevalence of abortion pills. A few decades ago, clandestine abortion – that is, abortion performed outside the law – was considered to be synonymous with unsafe abortion, but this is no longer the case. Now there are safe abortion support networks, and in contexts of legal restriction, during the first weeks of pregnancy women and others with the capacity to gestate are able to have an abortion with pills at home, without the need to resort to a health institution.

    The victory of the Argentinian women’s movement in December 2020 has shown that alliances, public debate and the diversification of voices are indispensable in the struggle to expand rights. The exponential increase in safe abortion initiatives is an expression of the achievements of the women’s movement’s struggle for human rights and reproductive justice. The Green Wave, the movement whose distinctive colour became synonymous with the struggle for abortion rights in Argentina, has spread in Mexico and although access to legal, safe and free abortion throughout the country is still a long way off, in recent years the issue has started to be discussed in various legislative bodies, even in states with highly restrictive legal frameworks.

    What kind of additional support would Mexican civil society need from its peers in the region and globally to achieve its goals?

    Social support for the causes we feminist human rights organisations defend is indispensable to obtain achievements such as the SCJN ruling of 7 September 2021. The dissemination of our work and the amplification of our voices is also extremely valuable. Local, national and regional networking to share experiences and good practices has also proven to be a tool from which we all benefit. Similarly, connections with other struggles through reflecting about their intersections can strengthen human rights movements.

    Civic space in Mexico is rated ‘repressed’ by theCIVICUS Monitor.
    Get in touch with GIRE through itswebsite orFacebook page, and follow@gire_mx on Twitter. 

  • MÉXICO: ‘Buscamos incidir en las políticas públicas del próximo gobierno para contribuir a solucionar los problemas del país’

    English

    En el marco de nuestro informe temático 2018 sobre “Reimaginar la Democracia”, estamos dialogando con líderes, activistas y especialistas de la sociedad civil sobre su labor de promoción de las prácticas y principios democráticos, los desafíos que enfrentan y los logros alcanzados. En esta oportunidad, CIVICUS conversa con Emanuel Johansen Campos, Coordinador de Fondos a la Vista de Alternativas y Capacidades, A.C. una organización de la sociedad civil (OSC) mexicana dedicada a fortalecer las capacidades de incidencia de la sociedad civil organizada, promover la inversión social estratégica y fortalecer la participación ciudadana en los asuntos públicos.

  • MEXICO: ‘Human rights defenders constantly put their freedom and their lives at risk’

    CIVICUS speaks with Antonio Lara Duque, a human rights lawyer with the Zeferino Ladrillero Human Rights Centre (CDHZL), about the situation of Indigenous rights defenders in Mexico, and specifically about the situation of Kenia Hernández, a criminalised and unjustly imprisoned woman Indigenous leader.

    CDHZL is a civil society organisation in the state of Mexico that accompanies the struggles of Indigenous communities, native peoples and collectives who are seeking a dignified life by claiming and exercising their human rights.

    Who is Kenia Hernández, and why is she detained?

    Kenia is an Indigenous Amuzga young woman. She is 32 years old. She is the coordinator of the Zapata Vive Libertarian Collective, which promotes peaceful resistance against the neoliberal development model. She is a lawyer by training, a self-identified feminist and is dedicated to defending human rights, and specifically to defending people imprisoned for political reasons, looking for missing people with the goal of finding them alive and giving legal support to female victims of violence.

    Kenia was arrested on 18 October 2020 under accusations of attacks on a public thoroughfare and robbery with violence. She was charged with serious crimes to ensure she could be kept in the most terrible maximum-security prison for women in all of Mexico.

    On 15 March 2022 the trial court in Ecatepec, in the state of Mexico, will determine whether she is guilty or innocent in one of the five criminal cases against her. All these cases were fabricated with the sole purpose of isolating her and preventing her from continuing mobilising, as well as to send a signal of exemplary punishment to all those people she managed to bring together into a nationwide movement that questioned the private management of highways.

    Is Kenia’s case part of a broader trend of criminalisation of Indigenous defenders in Mexico?

    Indeed, Kenia’s case reveals that the Mexican state has a clear policy of a ‘pedagogy of punishment’, for two reasons.

    First, it sends a signal to the people who protest, and particularly to those who protest against the privatisation of highways, that they should no longer resort to public demonstrations as a form of social mobilisation, because if they do, they will bring upon themselves an unjust and cruel imprisonment such as the one experienced by Kenia.

    Second, Mexican state officials are trying to subdue and bend the will of Kenia, to punish her for protesting, but also to weaken her convictions, to subdue the energy and strength she puts into protest, to let her know who is in charge and who must obey. As she has not submitted to them, they continue to keep her in prison. They know that if she is released she will go back to her activism.

    Both situations are seriously worrying, because they seek to reverse decades of social struggles and opening of democratic spaces.

    What is civil society, and specifically CDHZL, doing to secure her release?

    CDHZL is dedicated to disseminating, promoting and defending the human rights of peoples, organisations and human rights defenders. We defend the environment, land and territory, the human right to water and Indigenous culture. And we focus particularly on the protection of human rights defenders, since in Mexico these are people who constantly put their freedom and their lives at risk.

    Part of our work consists in providing legal defence to human rights defenders who are unjustly criminalised and imprisoned for the peaceful defence of their rights. In its 10 years of existence, CDHZL has helped around 250 people regain their freedom.

    We hope that soon Kenia will be another of them. Mexican civil society has given a lot of visibility to her case, putting her criminalisation on the public agenda and involving key people, in particular Mexican senators, to convince relevant decision-makers to stop criminalising Kenia. We have also tried to bring her case to the international arena, pointing out the punitive policy of the Mexican federal government.

    Through its large team of lawyers, CDHZL has sustained a legal defence in the five legal processes against Kenia, with all that they entail: dozens of hearings, challenges and trials of guarantees, some of which we won. But clearly this is much more than a legal struggle, as high-ranking officials are determined to keep Kenia in prison at all costs.

    Has there been any improvement in the situation of Indigenous defenders under the current leftist government?

    We expected improvements in the situation of Indigenous peoples and human rights defenders and collective rights more generally, but unfortunately there continues to be a generalised disdain among the federal government, regardless of its leftist leanings.

    The government has been unable or unwilling to tune in to the most heartfelt demands of Indigenous peoples. Aggressions against human rights defenders have continued, including disappearances, murders and imprisonments. When it comes to imprisonment, Kenia’s case is one of the most shocking examples of the misuse of the criminal justice system against a human rights defender under a government that claims to be the architect of a ‘fourth transformation’ – a process of profound change supposedly comparable to those of independence (1810-1821), reform (1858-1861) and revolution (1910-1917).

    What kind of regional and international support does Mexican civil society need in its struggle for human rights and civic space?

    Undoubtedly, international observation, very poorly accepted by the current government, would help recover democratic spaces for social protest and the free expression of ideas.

    Appeals to the Mexican government can help sensitise the authorities to the importance of respecting human rights and those who defend them beyond political party affiliations.

    International mediation and good offices will undoubtedly be a key tool to strengthen civil society in the defence of human rights, particularly in processes where the life and freedom of human rights defenders and Indigenous peoples’ rights are at stake.

    Civic space in Mexico is rated ‘repressed’ by the CIVICUS Monitor.

    Get in touch with CDHZL through itswebsite or itsFacebook andInstagram pages, and follow @cdhzloficial on Twitter.

     

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