OFRANEH
In 2023, the United Nations Forum on Business and Human Rights in named OFRANEH the recipient of the 2023 Human Rights and Business Award in Geneva.
The Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras (OFRANEH) creates processes to defend the rights of the Garifuna and indigenous peoples of Honduras. Defending life, culture and territory are the common aims that unite the coastal communities of thenorthern region as part of OFRANEH. Their women are, to a large extent, the ones who sustain and help the Organisation build models of community life based on collective care and common wellbeing. In recent years, these women defenders and OFRANEH have become victims of hundreds of attacks on their human rights.
Human rights defenders suffer extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearances, torture and ill-treatment as well as judicial harassment, threats and stigmatisation. Journalists, lawyers, prosecutors, those defending the rights of women, children, the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) community, indigenous and Afro-Honduran communities, and those working on environmental and land rights issues are particularly at risk.
LGBTI defenders in Honduras are doubly discriminated against. They are discriminated firstly because they are human rights defenders and secondly because they defend LGBTI rights. Journalists continue to face increased risks as they report on human rights violations. Constant threats, harassment and killings of journalists have led many to self-censor. Since the 2009 military coup, the number of killings, threats and acts of intimidation against campesinos and environmental rights defenders has increased. The perpetrators of violations against many defenders of environmental, land and indigenous rights, are often influential landowners or logging companies.
