PBI-Honduras accompanies CEHPRODEC at festival in the Lenca community of Simpinula

On March 4, PBI-Honduras tweeted: “PBI accompanies CEHPRODEC [the Honduran Centre for the Promotion of Community Development] at the Réunion performance festival in Simpinula (La Paz). We recognize the tireless work of CEHPRODEC in promoting community development projects and in promoting the defense of the human rights of indigenous peoples and peasants in #Honduras .”

The Lenca community of Simpinula

The Indigenous Lenca community of Simpinula has organized since March 17, 2012, “to defend their territory and their common property and the environment.”

Radio Progreso has explained: “Simpinula is located in the municipality of Santa María in the department of La Paz. An approximate of 100 people are those who inhabit the place that gained notoriety in the country for the rejection of the extractive industry, which in this area is expressed in hydroelectric or mining.”

That article adds: “Víctor Vásquez of the Lenca Indigenous Council, reported that the indigenous people of Simpinula, is a community like a lot of resistance and continues to resist against the onslaught of the extractivist model.”

CEHPRODEC’s work

Two area of CEHRPRODEC’s work include mining and energy/water concessions:

MINING

The CEHPRODEC website notes:

“The monitoring and observation in the last two decades of the mining processes in the country, whether these are industrial, artisanal, metallic or non-metallic mining, has led CEHPRODEC to carry out a permanent monitoring of this industry, its legislation and the effects that its violent execution has had on the territories at the national level. To confront this industry and its harmful methods, CEHPRODEC strengthens community organization, legally accompanies persecuted and criminalized by territorial defence, as well as the revision of legislation on the subject.”

ENERGY/WATER CONCESSIONS

Their website also notes:

“One of the greatest concerns of the populations in the territories where CEHPRODEC carries out its work is the way in which the State of Honduras has delivered water concessions and contracts to families and companies without consulting the communities and violating the right to public information and to decide on their common goods. In CEHPRODEC we understand that water must be destined mainly for human consumption, for domestic use for agricultural production and then for industrial production, priorities that are not observed at present and that have led to increased social conflict in our country.”

CEHPRODEC was founded in 1991.

PBI Honduras has been accompanying CEHPRODEC since May 2014.

CEHPRODEC lawyer Andrea Regina Pineda says: “We applaud the initiative of this new administration [to prohibit mining], considering that we are coming out of a dictatorial government that for so many years passed laws unfavorable to Indigenous and rural communities and the environment in Honduras.”