Martín Gómez Vásquez
Martín Gómez Vásquez is a leader of the Movimiento Indígena Lenca de La Paz Honduras (Lenca Indigenous Movement of La Paz, Honduras - MILPAH). MILPAH is an organisation dedicated to advocating for the rights of Lenca indigenous communities in the department of La Paz, including by defending their rights to their ancestral lands and environmental rights through seeking the application of ILO Convention 169 on the right of indigenous communities to previous, free and informed consent.
As a result of their activism, members of MILPAH have been threatened, assaulted and even killed. Martín Gómez Vásquez is a beneficiary of precautionary measures granted by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on 24 November 2015 for several members of the Indigenous Council of San Isidro Labrador and MILPAH, including 2016 FLD Award for Human Rights Defenders at Risk laureate Ana Mirian Romero.
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.
