Evidence of meeting #49 for Subcommittee on International Human Rights in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was groups.
A video is available from Parliament.
1:50 p.m.
NDP
Tyrone Benskin NDP Jeanne-Le Ber, QC
That leads me to the $64 million question.
As was mentioned earlier, we have entered into a free trade agreement with Honduras. But with this evidence—yes, it's circumstantial at this point—and from the testimony that we're hearing from different levels, what should the U.S. and Canada be doing to put pressure on the Hernandez government to make true on at least the nine reforms that were presented, and pull away from protecting the impunity of actions of this state?
1:55 p.m.
Senior Associate, International Policy, Center for Economic and Policy Research
I would say the first thing is to look at results. There has been a lot of window dressing in Honduras in terms of human rights since the 2009 coup.
In 2010-11, various human rights institutions were created and then they were failed to be given adequate resources to do anything to try to deal with the human rights crisis in the country. It's one thing to discuss plans and the announcement of their implementation, and so on. It's quite another thing to actually see results on the ground, and we haven't been seeing any sort of results.
It's the same thing all over again, really. There was this supposed big effort in 2010-11 made by the government of Porfirio Lobo precisely at the time when they were hoping to be let back into the Organization of American States from which they had been suspended after the coup. So in order to show their good will they created a number of institutions, and very quickly not only independent observers on the ground among the human rights groups, but also individuals staffing those institutions said they had no real resources, and the police, the judiciary, and so on, were not cooperative.
Again, it's very important to look at actual results and to get some concrete evidence that things are moving forward.
1:55 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Scott Reid
Just before I wrap things up here, I just had one question I wanted to follow up on. It was one on Mr. Sweet's series of questions.
You referred to allegations that judges and prosecutors who effectively do their jobs according to the letter of their job, and therefore close in or begin the process of closing in on illegal acts or I could see even in some cases murderous acts that have been facilitated by government officials, that they are removed from their posts.
I'm wondering about the sources of those allegations. You mentioned human rights organizations. Could you be a bit more specific by way of providing us what amounts to footnotes to what you had said to us?
1:55 p.m.
Senior Associate, International Policy, Center for Economic and Policy Research
Absolutely. I'm just going to check my notes.
I think the main organization is the Association of Judges for Democracy, which is a group that I believe pre-exists the coup and the very high levels of political polarization.
1:55 p.m.
Senior Associate, International Policy, Center for Economic and Policy Research
It's a Honduran organization. It is. That's correct.
1:55 p.m.
Senior Associate, International Policy, Center for Economic and Policy Research
Just to add to that, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights also makes comments to the same effect, perhaps based on information coming from this group in their recent preliminary findings.
1:55 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Scott Reid
Thank you.
In the event you have more specific references as to where to look for this information, and you would like to send it to the committee, we'll make sure that it gets distributed to our members as well. It might be that you have some more precise directions to point us in then, and we would be grateful if you could do that.
1:55 p.m.
Senior Associate, International Policy, Center for Economic and Policy Research
Well, no, absolutely. At this point, at this juncture, if you want to have sort of the best update of the human rights situation, I think these preliminary findings from the Inter-American Commission are really quite critical. I don't think there's anything else similar that's out there.
Otherwise I would refer to you many documents in Spanish that have been produced by the human rights organizations in Honduras such as COFADEH; CIPRODEH; the Casa Alianza, which I mentioned earlier; the commission for women, the Centro de Derechos de Mujeres; and others.
Unfortunately, they are lacking resources and have often not been able to translate these documents, but if some of these documents could be translated and be made available to the members of your committee, I think that would be very helpful indeed.
2 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Scott Reid
You need not regard that as an obstacle. One of our researchers is a native hispanophone and my assistant is also a native Spanish speaker so these are not insurmountable problems by any stretch of the imagination.
Thank you very much. We are very grateful you took the time to be with us today.
I'm now going to dismiss our witness and ask our colleagues to stay while we go in camera and deal with some other business.
Thank you very much.
[Proceedings continue in camera]