PBI-Honduras observes International Women’s Day (IWD) march in Tegucigalpa

Published by Brent Patterson on March 8, 2025March 8, 2025

On International Women’s Day, PBI-Honduras posted:

“Today we observe the march within the framework of #8March. The organizations of #women demand a halt to the structural #violenceagainst #women, greater access to the PAE [the Emergency Contraceptive Pill or “morning-after pill”] and greater protection for #women #defenders of #humanrights

From PBI, we express concern about the high rates of #femicide and attacks against women defenders and we remember that #Honduras has not yet approved a Comprehensive Law against Violence towards Women, requested by the organizations.”

Honduras has the highest rate of femicide in Latin America

In August 2023, The Globe and Mail reported: “A UN report, which detailed a breakdown by country [in 2021], found that among 11 Latin American countries, Honduras had the highest rate of femicide – murders of women that are gender-motivated – with 4.6 cases per 100,000 women. Women’s organizations estimate that 90 per cent of Honduran femicides go unpunished.”

That article adds: “Luis Martinez Estrada, a sociologist and the co-ordinator of the Regional Violence Observatory, said the rise of violence in Honduras spans decades but intensified in the 2000s. Although he said some progress was being made in human rights, the 2009 coup that ousted president Manuel Zelaya reversed some of that. ‘We saw a militarization of our society and how politicians with connections regained the power of the country,’ he said.’”

Their banner says: “Because you are frightened by those who fight and not by those who die?”

Abortion remains illegal, the ”morning after pill” legalized on IWD 2023

In April 2024, The Guardian reported: “Honduras is one of five Latin American countries – along with Haiti, Nicaragua, El Salvador and the Dominican Republic – where abortion is prohibited in all circumstances, even in cases of rape, incest, or when the pregnant woman’s life is at risk. Until last year, it was also the only country to outlaw emergency contraceptives.”

In March 2023, the BBC reported: “Honduras, a largely Catholic Central American country, banned the use of the morning-after pill following a coup in 2009 that ousted Xiomara Castro’s husband, then-President Manuel Zelaya. …The country’s first-ever woman leader said she had made the change by executive order [legalizing the pill] for International Women’s Day, on 8 March.”

This placard says: “This M8 I don’t want flowers, I want rights.”

A Comprehensive Law against violence against women is still pending

On March 9, 2024, La Via Campesina called for: “The immediate submission of the proposed Comprehensive Law against Violence against Women by President Xiomara Castro and its approval in the National Congress, in the face of the wave of murders we cannot stand idly by.”

Reporting on the IWD march that took place in Tegucigalpa on March 7, La Tribuna highlighted: “The women called for the approval of the Comprehensive Law against violence against women, the Purple Alert Law for the search for missing women, and the regulations of the Law for the protection of women in contexts of humanitarian crises, natural disasters and emergencies.”

This sign says: “If abuses were fire, Honduras would be in flames.”

Women human rights defenders are under attack

In December 2023, the Mesoamerican Initiative of Women Human Rights Defenders (IM-Defensoras) documented the murders of “Juana Maria Martinez, woman defender of the Indigenous Pech Peoples and Soraya Alvarez, trans defender of LGBTI rights in Honduras.”

In 2022, IM-Defensoras noted: “In Honduras, we registered 70 attacks against 15 women defenders of women’s right to a life free from violence.”

In July 2021, The Guardian reported: “Between 2016 and 2019, 48% of all incidents targeting female defenders in the region [of Central America] occurred in Honduras [according to research by IM-Defensoras].”

We continue to follow this.