Although she expects to be detained upon reaching the United States, she believes it is worth the risk to escape the violence in Honduras. Most of them are families, they’re women and single mothers who came with their children or on their own because they left their families behind to find a way of supporting them,” she says. “The police have no authority there,” she says of why her family could not approach the authorities for help. If you report the gangs, she says, they will find out and “they will fuck you up”. Claudia’s family have traveled over a thousand miles, with one child in a pushchair and the others walking. They were forced to leave Honduras after a gang threatened them for failing to make “war tax” payments on her husband’s small business. While President Trump has called the caravan members “criminals” and deployed over 5,000 soldiers to prevent them from crossing the US-Mexico border, a great many of them are women and children https://thegirlcanwrite.net/hot-honduran-women/ simply searching for a safe place to rebuild their lives.
- In 2018, 7.2% of women aged years reported that they had been subject to physical and/or sexual violence by a current or former intimate partner in the previous 12 months.
- Lorena, a 30-year-old transgender woman who had been a sex worker in Honduras, says she left because of widespread homophobia that translated into constant violence from police and clients.
- UUSC’s partners, Foro de Mujeres Por la Vida, have documented for years—through their Women’s Security Observatory—both high rates of femicide and systematic impunity in the Honduran justice system for perpetrators of these crimes.
- When she appeared to win a major policy victory in April, for instance, when the Honduran congress voted unanimously to abolish the law authorizing ZEDEs, two U.S. senators responded by pressuring the State Department to take action against her government.
Now, they want to take their training center to the next level and improve the lives of the artisans they work with, who are Lenca women. Further violence and discrimination in transit and destination countries, Lorena opted to join the caravan because she felt safer in a larger group.
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The CEDAW review will provide President Castro’s administration with an independent expert assessment of how it can better protect women’s and girls’ rights. The government should use the committee’s recommendations to develop concrete policies to uphold those rights. Espite these attacks, the women of Honduras continue to fight for their rights, with some even using the fear intended to silence them as common ground for others to rally behind.
FFTP Celebrates National Hispanic Heritage Month: Honduran Women Work Together to Weave Brighter Future
Sonia became a role model in her community, balancing her family and business while providing answers https://www.womansday.com/relationships/dating-marriage/a38558484/love-messages-for-him-and-her/ to women with questions about health. “I think it is important that young people, and particularly men, raise awareness about this type of violence,” added Daniel Vijil, from the youth institution El Milenio. “Indeed, women are the affected ones, but as men, we have a greater opportunity to influence other men and make them reflect on how we impact our sisters, friends and colleagues with our behaviour”. If I did, I would get beaten up”, explained a survivor of gender-based violence—who spoke anonymously with us to protect her safety—during a visit of UN authorities to a safe house.
Lack of education does not seem to be the cause for the gender gap in workforce participation.By 2016, 12 percent of young women (15-24 years old) had attained some tertiary education while only 10.8 percent of young men had. Also, a larger share of boys had not completed primary schooling (14.1 percent vs. 10.9 percent of girls). In its 2016 review of Honduras, the CEDAW Committee urged the government to decriminalize abortion, noting that the ban caused women and girls to seek unsafe abortions and increased maternal mortality. Gloria Carolina Hernández Vásquez, a well-known LGBTQI+ rights and HIV/AIDS advocate, was kidnapped and murdered in 2015. Last year two prominent trans activists, Melissa Núñez and Thalía Rodríguez, were also assassinated.
Their joint funeral was broadcast around the world and attended by thousands. “The only thing that I ask for is help to leave this country to have security in a place where my daughters can study, and I can move forward with my life with them,” said Marisela’s mother.
Marisela and her family are part of the 190,000 Hondurans who have been displaced within their own borders. Trump administration officials have repeatedly said that asylum-seekers can seek safety in their own country, but many fleeing Honduras have already tried that. Thanks to a new rule, migrants who arrive at the U.S. border with Mexico without having sought asylum in one of the countries they passed through are now ineligible for asylum in the U.S. The Trump administration introduced the rule in July, but an injunction from a federal judge prevented it from being implemented until last month, when the Supreme Court lifted the injunction while litigation is ongoing. The result is effectively an asylum ban for most Central Americans and many others.
It is not only women who must strengthen a social movement that contributes to breaking gender stereotype paradigms and cycles of sexism that lead to gender-based violence. The law on safe houses, which has been stalled in the National Congress since 2018, aims to recognize and fund safe houses to provide care for survivors of multiple forms of violence, ensuring their wellbeing and that of their families. Civil society continues to advocate for this law to be passed and the United Nations has joined in these efforts. Honduras has the highest femicide rate in the Latin American region, with6.2 cases per 100,000 inhabitants. In 2020,278 women were murdered in the countryand, as of November 2021, more than 240 women have lost their lives violently.
After her mother’s murder, the daughter of Berta Cáceres followed her legacy and carried on her activism, arguing that her mother hadn’t died, “she multiplied.” Erika Urtecho Echeverría, Echeverría’s daughter, is another example of this incredible resilience. After her mother’s death, Urtecho ran in her place and is now the congresswoman for the department of Gracias a Dios. One notable exception is the case of Berta Cáceres, an internationally acclaimed and award-winning environmental defender and Indigenous Lenca activist. Cáceres was violently murdered in her home in 2016 in retaliation for her activism. Her story is remarkable, https://b2b.partcommunity.com/community/groups/topic/view/group_id/831/topic_id/15421/post_id/54493 both for her renowned advocacy and because it is a rare case in which a top executive was formally charged and convicted for her death. This conviction can likely be attributed to international and national pressure to bring justice to her case. For instance, in 2014 two women prosecutors, Marlene Banegas and Patricia Eufragio, were assassinated by sicarios in the Honduran city of San Pedro Sula while on their way home from work.