PBI-Honduras to hear the testimony of LGBTQI+ defenders, Dec. 6

The Peace Brigades International-Honduras Project has posted on its Facebook page, “This Friday, December 6, we will be at Casa Quinchon listening to the testimony of defenders of the rights of the LGTBIQ+ community. It will include the presentation of the report ‘Voices and Stories of Diversity in Honduras’ prepared together with Peace Brigades International (UK). We are waiting for you!”

The struggle for LGBTQI+ rights in Honduras is a critical one. Between 2009 and mid-2018, 296 members of the community were murdered.

And there is a high level of impunity. Of the 141 violent deaths reported between 2010 and 2014, less than one-quarter (30) of the cases have been prosecuted in the courts.

PBI-Honduras has accompanied the advocacy group Asociación LGTB Arcoiris de Honduras (LGTB Rainbow Association of Honduras) since July 2015. The organization faces violence, intimidation, harassment and physical attacks.

Arcoíris coordinator Donny Reyes has stated, “The biggest problem that we face is the violence of the state security forces towards the LGBT+ community: the armed forces, the police, the criminal investigation police, military police, municipal police.”

The violence also drives migration. In November 2018, Telesur reported that a group of at least 40 Honduran LGBT youth were travelling as part of a migrant caravan to the United States. They were making the arduous and dangerous journey to escape the discrimination, violence and poverty in their home country.

Most recently, Arcoíris has launched a court challenge. The Honduran Constitution bans same-sex marriage and refuses to recognize them even if they have been legally sanctioned in other countries, including in Canada where it has been legal since July 2005.

In July 2018, Reyes and Alex Soto of the Centre for LGBTI Development and Cooperation (Somos CDC) filed a constitutional challenge on marriage equality and adoption. That petition is pending before the Supreme Court of Honduras.

On November 19, 40 human rights lawyers from across Latin America (including Honduras) launched the Red Litigio LGBT (the LGBT Litigation Network).

The South Florida Gay News reports, “This group of legal experts has an ambitious agenda.  They have identified the following goals for the member countries: ensuring that LGBT relationships are decriminalized, allowing for public displays of affection among same-sex couples, full marriage and adoption rights, gender identity protection laws and combatting impunity in homicide cases.”

For more, please read Peace Brigades International and the human right to sexual orientation and gender identity.