For Miranda and Zúñiga, we can reconnect and advance the legitimacy of human rights by identifying the ‘monster’ created by the collaboration of power-holders such as the military, corporations, governments, and organized crime entities (especially those involved in perpetuating the drug war). They said we must call these threats by name, and work together across issues, movements, and spaces.
We invite you to join us for an evening with internationally renowned Honduran Indigenous rights leaders Miriam Miranda and Bertha Zúniga Cáceres on Wednesday, July 12 at 6:30 PM at New York University. Please RSVP today. Join Miriam Miranda and Bertha Zúniga...
Video about why the US Congress must pass the Berta Cáceres Human Rights in Honduras Act (H.R. 1299)
Below is a statement from COPINH, the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras, our grantee and ally, concerning the alleged exit of hydroelectric investors in Honduras.
The Guardian recently reported that international investors plan to pull $44 million in funding from the Agua Zarca dam megaproject in Honduras—a project opposed by Indigenous and social movements for years. According to COPINH, however, investors have not yet withdrawn their funding for the dam.
Grassroots International recent ten-member delegation to Honduras included activists that were already at the forefront of awareness-building and funding around policy advocacy campaigns at the U.S. and international levels through their own political organizations. This composition of activists is key to following through on the delegation's commitment to its Honduran allies: getting the work done at the policy level requires a double-edged sword of root cause analysis and donors willing to speak that truth to power.
Following the brazen murder of activist Berta Cáceres, Grassroots International created an emergency fund and was able to raise over $50,000 for activist movements in Honduras.
With heavy hearts, Grassroots International mourns the death of Lesbia Yaneth Urquía Urquía, a member of COPINH (Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras), who was brutally killed on July 6, just 4 months after the assassination of Berta Cáceres. Lesbia Yaneth defended the rights of Indigenous communities and opposed the privatization of rivers in La Paz, Honduras. Since the 2009 military coup in Honduras, over 100 environmental activists (including Indigenous Peoples, peasant leaders, and more) have been killed, and thousands criminalized and jailed.
Berta Cáceres – indigenous, environmental, and human rights defender and fierce feminist who was assassinated in Honduras on March 3rd, 2016 – was, among so many other things, a mother in resistance. She inherited this from her mother, who was an inspiration to her, and she passed this down to her own daughters and son.
Berta’s mother, Austra Bertha Flores Lopez, worked as a midwife and served as mayor of their town and then governor of their state. She taught her daughter about fighting for justice from the time she was a child. During the period of intense violence of the 1980s, Austra took in and cared for refugees from El Salvador, showing her children what real solidarity looks like.
This year Grassroots International is dedicating International Women’s Day – March 8 – to Berta Cáceres, courageous indigenous Lenca leader and coordinator of the Civic Council of Indigenous People’s Organizations in Honduras (COPINH). Just days ago we learned that Berta was assassinated in her home. A leader in the Lenca community, Berta helped organize a powerful movement to stop the construction of the Agua Zarca dam and to protect the Gualcarque river basin. For more than a year the Lenca people maintained a human blockade to stop trucks from entering the dam construction site and thus halted its construction.
Last night indigenous rights leader and social justice warrior Berta Cáceres was murdered in her home in Honduras. This follows weeks of mounting threats and years of violence and aggression targeting indigenous peoples, women, small farmers and environmental activists in Honduras and throughout Central America.
