How women filmmakers are flipping the script in Honduras

Fewer than three percent of gender-motivated murders are solved by the courts in the countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. Both corruption and intimidation play a large role, and many people don’t report the crimes against them out of fear. When people in Honduras do report these crimes, them and their families are often subjected to further gang violence, which the police and government are largely powerless to prevent. In Honduras, 83.3% of legal frameworks that promote, enforce and monitor gender equality under the SDG indicator, with a focus on violence against women, are in place. In 2012, 76% of women of reproductive age (15-49 years) had their need for family planning satisfied with modern methods. Honduras has become part of the small group of nations, 16 out of 193 United Nations countries, to have a female-led government. President Castro composes 9% of the world’s governments that are in the hands of women—becoming the only woman currently presiding over a government in the entire American continent, except for Barbados.

  • 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.
  • According to Gladys Lanza, a trade union activist, women were extremely active in the 1954 national banana workers strike.
  • I have learned, during almost eight months at HKS, that the implementation of any public policy is hard because it is contextual.
  • The average age of first contact with gangs is 13 years old, a 2020 UN Development Programme report found.
  • Additionally, the increase of work for women does not also lead to an increase of political or social power and influence.

The new project is an expansion opportunity in which Mercado Global will take what it’s learned from its model in Guatemala and apply it in Honduras to connect the women and their brightly colored fabrics to well-known major retailers and international markets. The Lenca people are the largest indigenous population in Honduras with around 2,000 villages and 116,000 people. The women have grown in their entrepreneurial skills and sustainable growing practices, so much so that they are now selling their vegetables to a supermarket chain that wants organic produce. To meet this increased demand for their products, World Renew helped the women double their planting space. Detection and typing of human papillomavirus in cervical cancer in the Thai.

That learning, put into practice, changed my leadership completely because I focused on building stronger ties with my team, which resulted in their commitment to our work. I developed more empathy, affection, and appreciation towards people and learned to be more open. These are skills that have helped me not only in my work, but in my personal life.

Although Honduras has reduced its homicide rate by half since 2011, it remains one of the world’s highest, with 44.8 murders per 100,000 population in 2019. From 2015 through 2019, authorities arrested 4,196 gang members, the National Police reported. Marred by corruption and abuse, the judiciary and police remain largely ineffective. Support and resources from a four-year Organization of American States mission to strengthen the fight against corruption and impunity, concluded in January 2020, have not produced lasting reforms. The UNSDG guides, supports, tracks and oversees the coordination of development operations in 162 countries and territories. In Honduras, the United Nations is committed to continue working together with a wide range of sectors of the country in achieving a more just and equitable society, where it isn’t dangerous to be a woman. As a result of this study, UN Women will be organizing trainings for media outlets on objective and respectful journalism in these types of subjects.

Honduras Should Commit to Protecting Women’s and Girls’ Rights

Similarly, in urban areas the fact that most wage jobs are held by men may discourage women from seeking employment. The problem of lower female participation in the labor market begins with early school dropout.

“I would have never thought that I’d go and sit with government representatives and hold them to rights, but now I do. The work with World Renew has trained us to open those doors to government support, and to solving our own problems” shared Mirtala. Cinema is the most important, powerful tool, because it can reach many people and it is very easy to disseminate. It is a way of communicating how we feel about the situations that happen to us. It’s a very important means of activism and an effective way to communicate positive messages to change the way we think. I felt it was important to show all the harmful things that have been normalized and share my experience with https://petradaid.org/ukraine-dating-site-targets-foreign-men-with-facebook-ads-amid-russias-war/ other young, Afro-Honduran women so that they know that they have rights, that no one can violate them, that they do not have to remain silent. In Honduras, very few black women hold corporate positions within a company or public service positions.

Just a few days before she was set to leave for the competition, Alvarado and her sister, 23-year-old Sofia Trinidad, were brutally murdered. Their bodies were hidden in shallow graves in a riverbank in Santa Barbara, Honduras, discovered after a week-long manhunt that made international headlines. Their joint funeral was broadcast around the world and attended by thousands. In 2014, a 19-year-old small town girl named Maria Jose Alvarado catapulted onto the world stage when her brilliant smile and sweet personality won her the Miss Honduras crown. With a freshly minted passport, she was set to compete for the prestigious Miss World title in London, a trip which would be the first plane ride of her life.

History of women’s rights

The government should use the committee’s recommendations to develop concrete policies to uphold those rights. 5.c.1 Proportion of countries with systems to track and make public allocations for gender equality and women’s empowerment. “There’s a 90 percent impunity rate when it comes to femicide cases, and a 96 percent impunity rate with sexual violence cases. We are living in an untold war,” said Neesa Medina, an analyst for the Center for Women’s Rights in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Ramos-Bobadilla employed armed individuals to work at her direction and control, including by providing security for her and her cocaine shipments.

Gender inequality in Honduras has seen improvements in some areas regarding gender inequality, while others have regressed towards further inequality since in 1980s. Comparing numbers from the 2011 and 2019 United Nations Human Development Reports helps to understand how gender inequality has been trending in Honduras. In the 2011 Human Development Report rankings for the Gender Inequality Index, Honduras ranked 121st out of 187 countries. In the 2019 Human Development Report Honduras dropped to 132nd out of 189 countries in the rankings. As the country’s overall ranking dropped, it indicates that progress towards gender equality is not being made on the same level as other countries around the world. If young women think staying at school will not bring them better job opportunities, there is a risk that they will drop out of secondary education. In rural areas, women looking for jobs may be discouraged more on honduran women more on https://latindate.org/central-american-women/honduran-women/ because they see that half of the jobs are in agriculture and these are mostly taken by men.

From January to September 2021, 31,894 Hondurans requested asylum in Mexico, the Mexican Commission for Refugee Aid reported—filing more than 35 percent of Mexico’s total asylum petitions. From January to July, 7,007 accompanied and 676 unaccompanied Honduran children requested asylum. In a 2020 survey by UNHCR and UNICEF, half of Hondurans interviewed in Mexico named violence as the main reason for their leaving. In February, journalist Henry Fiallos and his family received anonymous death threats after he covered a femicide in which police officers were implicated. In August, he reported having been brutally beaten by police officers while doing his job. Since MACCIH left, the Attorney General’s Office has harassed and intimidated the head of its own anti-corruption criminal enterprise office, Prosecutor Luis Javier Santos, and members of his team.

Yet when the “Nightline” team went to visit, there were only a handful of women there asking for help. According to the Women’s District Attorney Maria Mercedes Bustelo, “What these women feel is impotence.

The Los Montes Cartel was a vicious drug trafficking organization that poisoned our citizens and engaged in violence to profit from drug trafficking. Our message to criminal organizations’ leadership is clear, we will not waver until drug distribution and it’s related violence is eradicated,” said Jarod Forget, Special Agent in Charge, DEA Washington Division. As we noted at this time a year ago, no one government or elected official can fully protect human rights, and every government—no matter https://safadv.com/filipino-family/ who helms it—must be held accountable to the same high standard of promoting human rights. After a year in office, Castro has not fully addressed the multiple challenges that Honduran people face, and structural barriers remain to her ability to make change. These forms of violence are compounded at the institutional level by policies that deny women access to reproductive rights and health care. Unlike many countries in Latin America, Honduras criminalizes abortion without exception and also places severe limitations on women’s access to emergency contraception.


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