A grassroots organization working with Garifuna (Afro-descendant and indigenous) communities in Honduras, OFRANEH works to protect Garifuna communities’ economic, social, and cultural rights, particularly with regard to farming, fishing, and defense of Mother Earth.
Garifuna communities sustain themselves through both fishing and farming. Land grabs for agrofuels (African Palm plantations) and for tourist resort development along the Atlantic coast seriously threaten their way of life. Their livelihoods are further impacted by rising sea levels and the increased frequency and severity of storms as a result of climate disruption.
OFRANEH brings together communities to meet these challenges head-on through a combination of direct action community organizing, legal strategies, promotion of Garifuna culture, and broader movement building. OFRANEH represents the Garifuna people in three legal cases through the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. As a leading Garifuna organization, it fosters alliances with peasants and Indigenous Peoples in Honduras and Central America. Through a network of Garifuna community radios, the organization promotes health and environmental education, supports the use of the Garifuna language, and promotes youth and women’s leadership development. The community radio network works to preserve the Garifuna culture, and is often used to coordinate community actions against the threats to the Garifunas’ ancestral territories.
In all of this work, OFRANEH prioritizes the leadership development of women and youth, through its coordination of designated structures within the organization such as the Organization of Hope of Garifuna Women in Honduras and the Youth of Honduras United in Defense of Territory and Culture.
Presente Edwin Fernández! Edwin provided security in a community where our partner, the Black Fraternal Organization of Hondurans (OFRANEH), is doing COVID relief. He is just one of the many environmental, land and Indigenous rights defenders who have been killed in recent years.
The Garifuna and our partner OFRANEH in Honduras have been facing down armed assaults this month. It's a concrete example of the violence that is driving people north to the U.S.-Mexico border.
