PBI-Honduras follows Inter-American Court of Human Rights hearing on Garifuna Community of Cayos Cochinos vs Honduras

Published by Brent Patterson on May 23, 2025May 23, 2025

On May 22, PBI-Honduras posted:

“From PBI, we will be closely following the sentence of the @corteidhoficial [the Inter-American Court of Human Rights] after the hearing in the case ‘Garifuna Community of Cayos Cochinos and its members vs. Honduras’, which took place in Guatemala City yesterday. During the hearing, #defender Mabel Robledo of the #Garifuna #community of Nueva Armenia denounced how the Cayos Cochinos Foundation would not be conserving the territory but restricting Garifuna artisanal fishing and lending the islands for the filming of international reality shows. Recently, we accompanied the Garifuna defender on a visit to a recovered territory outside of Nueva Armenia, another area where the Garifuna people warn about the grabbing of their #ancestral territory by third parties, in this case the #Palmaafrican palm company Palmas de Atlántida.

A live stream of yesterday’s hearing was posted on the IACHR Court’s channels: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydOOAAHlhwA.”

Mabel is on starting at about the 19-minute mark in the YouTube link.

Introduction to the IACtHR hearing

HCH Digital Television notes: “The present case concerns the possible international responsibility of the State of Honduras for the alleged violation of the right to collective property of the Garifuna Community of Cayos Cochinos and its members, as well as for the lack of adequate and effective remedies to remedy that situation.”

Criterio.hn further explains: “This hearing stems from a lawsuit filed on October 29, 2003 by OFRANEH before the IACHR against the State of Honduras for the multiple violations of rights and aggressions directed at the Garifuna community of Cayos Cochinos. In other words, more than 20 years have passed since this petition was presented and to this day the aggressions and systematic violence against the Garifuna people of Cayos Cochinos continue to be present.

Contra Corriente also reports: “On May 21, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR Court) held a public hearing in Guatemala City on the case of the Garifuna community of Cayos Cochinos and its members Honduras vr. the State in the framework of its 176th period of sessions of the inter-American system. The case was presented by the Honduran Black Fraternal Organization (OFRANEH) which accuses the State of Honduras of violations of the territorial and cultural rights and self-determination of the Garifuna community.”

The article highlights: “Mabel Robledo, tells us in an interview with our editorial director Jennifer Avila, that, since 1993, when the Cayos Cochinos Foundation was created with the supposed objective of protecting the territory and safeguarding natural resources, the Garifuna communities have lived a process of systematic exclusion. It also points out that, far from benefiting the indigenous peoples, the Honduran State facilitated the Navy so that, through this foundation, the right to food was violated and restrictions were imposed on fishing, one of the fundamental pillars of community life.”

Testimony by Mabel Robledo

Another article in Criterio.hn reports:

“Mabel Ávila Robledo raised the unequal relationship in which the Garifuna live under the administration of the Cayos Cochinos Foundation, which manages the protected area. They point out the forced disappearances, threats, raids and deforestation of which the Garifuna are victims and that they point to the Foundation and military stationed in the area as responsible for them.

In addition to this, he raised how during the filming of reality shows – for which the Foundation is remunerated – their movement, fishing and other economic activities are restricted. Nor, he said, are they taken into account in the development of environmental management plans. She said that when members of the Navy arrive in Chachahuate, they open the doors without a judge’s order and regardless of the time.

Ávila Robledo also denounced that while the Garifuna populations are restricted from artisanal fishing, the Cayos Cochinos Foundation has allowed industrial fishing by third parties. She remarked that the Garifuna people are not against conservation, but that the reality of the Foundation is that it puts profit before protection. She exemplified this situation with the filming of reality television shows in Cayo Paloma and El Playón, nesting sites for birds and sea turtles.

“Let them go! The Foundation is not there to conserve. We are not against conservation, I come back and repeat. What we are against is the monopoly that the Foundation has to continue getting rich. The Foundation came to that area and saw that it had opportunities to make money… They build management plans that they themselves do not respect,” she remarked.”

Accompaniment

Criterio.hn reports: “The National Network of Women Human Rights Defenders in Honduras has documented and recorded multiple attacks against Garifuna communities defending their territorial rights. OFRANEH continues to be one of the most attacked organizations in the country, as they are the ones who are in direct confrontation with this capitalist, racist system of dispossession against the Garifuna people.”

PBI-Honduras and PBI-Canada coordinator Brent Patterson met with Mabel Robledo on Garifuna territory in Honduras on October 31, 2024. More on what we learned at that time at PBI-Honduras visits Garifuna community of Nueva Armenia following police violence after recovery project (November 3, 2024).