Gloria Carolina Hernández Vásquez
Gloria Carolina Hernández Vásquez - also known as Génesis Hernández - was a LGBTI human rights defender from Honduras. She collaborated with Asociación por una Vida Mejor - APUVIMEH (Association for a Better Life). APUVIMEH works with the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex community and those affected by HIV/AIDS in Honduras. It also operates Casa Renacer shelter for people with HIV/AIDS and those of the LGBTI community, and runs several projects including a programme for the prevention of HIV/AIDS and sexual infections, and a youth project. Génesis Hernández was one of the first people to begin claiming LGBTI rights in Honduras. Génesis Hernández was also a poet and in her poems she had dealt with the sexual rights of women, including lesbians and bisexual women, as a way of giving visibility to these issues. She had also taken part in many marches for LGBTI rights and recently had to flee Tegucigalpa owing to threats against her. On 18 September 2015, poet and LGBTI rights defender Ms Gloria Carolina Hernández Vásquez, also known as Génesis Hernández, was kidnapped and brought to the outskirts of Tegucigalpa where she was killed.
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.
