Photo: Bertha Zúñiga Cáceres and Ilhan Omar.
In their social media post noting the re-election of Ilhan Omar to the U.S. House of Representatives, the Civic Council of Popular Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH) highlights: “Since 2018, she has championed the Berta Cáceres Act, which seeks to condition U.S. military aid to Honduras on the fulfillment of human rights guarantees and the investigation of human rights violations committed by security forces.”
In September 2019, Omar posted on social media: “In 2016, Honduran activist Berta Caceres was murdered by US trained Honduran police. We should not be providing security aid to a government that refuses to prosecute all those responsible.”
The Berta Cáceres Act
Peace Brigades International-Canada has previously noted that the “Berta Cáceres Human Rights in Honduras Act” proposes: “To suspend United States security assistance with Honduras until such time as human rights violations by Honduran security forces cease and their perpetrators are brought to justice.”
Section 2 of that legislation states:
“(1) The Honduran military and police are widely established to be deeply corrupt and commit human rights abuses, including torture, rape, illegal detention, and murder, with impunity.
(21) In this context of corruption and human rights abuses, trade unionists, journalists, lawyers, Afro-Indigenous activists, Indigenous activists, small-farmer activists, LGBTI activists, human rights defenders, environmental defenders, and critics of the government remain at severe risk; and previous human rights abuses against them remain largely unpunished.
(23) United States agencies allocated approximately $39 million that Congress appropriated through the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2017, to the Honduran police and military for fiscal year 2017.”
Accompaniment
After the murder of Berta Cáceres in March 2016, her daughter Bertha Zuniga Cáceres left her studies in Mexico City to take up the leadership of the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), and in May 2017 she was elected general coordinator of that body, the same position her mother had occupied.
The coordinators of COPINH, including Zuniga Cáceres, have been accompanied by Peace Brigades International since May 2016.
Further reading: Photo-journal of PBI-Canada with PBI-Honduras accompanying COPINH on the 10th anniversary of the sowing of Berta Caceres (PBI-Canada, March 3, 2026).
