On September 11

On this day in ...
... 2001, at a special session in Lima, Peru, the General Assembly of the Organization of American States adopted the Inter-American Democratic Charter. (image credit) Binding on the 34 member states of the OAS, the Charter details what democracy entails and how it is to be defended. As IntLawGrrl Naomi Roht-Arriaza then posted, the Charter figured in events surrounding the June 2009 ouster by Honduran armed forces of democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya. Zelaya remains in exile, and increasingly, states in the Americas are recognizing the Honduran government that replaced him.


(Prior September 11 posts are here, here, and here.)

Lawyering Honduras' coup

El Pais reports that the prosecutor charged with fighting corruption in Honduras has asked the country's Supreme Court for a warrant against the junta members responsible for ousting the country's democratically elected President last summer, a coup about which IntLawGrrl Naomi Roht-Arriaza posted.

The charge to be investigated should the anti-coup case be opened: abuse of authority and unconstitutional expatriation.(Meanwhile, the ousted President, Manuel Zelaya, is living in refuge at the Brazilian embassy in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa.)

The move coincided, El Pais noted, with an official visit by Craig A. Kelly, the United States' Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, Bureau of Western Hemispheric Affairs.

Prosecutorial efforts soon may be short-circuited, however; Honduran legislators are set next week to consider a blanket grant of amnesty.

Look On! Kids hopping trains to the U.S.

(Look On! takes occasional note of noteworthy films.) Everybody's talking about Which Way Home, the documentary about children from Central America who ride alone atop trains in their bid to make it to the United States. Directed and produced by Rebecca Cammisa, the film recently made its television début on HBO. (photo credit)
Many of us have written about unaccompanied minors; among them, IntLawGrrl Jaya Ramji-Nogales, in this post.
The United States has been particularly cognizant of the issue in recent years, inviting testimony before Congress on the perils of unaccompanied minors who were then being placed into adult detention -- that is, prison -- facilities. More recently, Congress addressed the issue within the 2008 Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, which included several provisions directing federal funding and resources to children (most often unaccompanied) who are subjected to various forms of human trafficking.
I have not yet seen the film, but The New York Times article about the movie states that it follows several boys from Honduras, passing through Mexico on trains and hoping to enter the United States to work or meet family members there. Having written and thought a great deal about human trafficking, as have other 'Grrls, such as Janie Chuang, I cannot help but wonder what will befall these children. If they make it to the United States, will they be detained? Will they fall into the hands of traffickers? If they do not make it to the United States, Mexico will most likely deport them. If they are not wanted by their families, or are victims of domestic violence, will Honduras protect them?
Several years ago, my students and I won asylum for a child from Honduras. His case was granted with a rare written opinion, in which the judge accepted the argument that his stepfather's abuse and the Honduran government's unwillingness to protect him constituted persecution. The judge was right. We had argued that Honduras had ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and in so doing had taken on affirmative obligations, but that Honduras nevertheless had failed to fulfill those obligations, ultimately leeaving our client unprotected. Typically, however, domestic violence claims have been denied in the country.
As IntLawGrrl Amy Senier posted a while back, U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has decided finally to issue regulations on gender-based asylum claims. With this decision, an opportunity presents itself. Unaccompanied minors might avoid detention, find pro bono counsel and apply for special immigrant juvenile status, or even be granted asylum in the United States under the theory that their home country was unwilling or unable to protect them from domestic violence.
I look forward to seeing Which Way Home, but I look forward even more to seeing children like those depicted in this movie receiving some much-needed protection.

A blow to democracy & human rights

This week the armed forces of Honduras overthrew democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya (left), arresting him at home and bundling him off to Costa Rica in his pyjamas. The army then installed its own president, with the thin legal veneer of the Honduran Supreme Court's blessing. The Organization of American States, the Obama administration, and human rights groups protested and called for Zelaya's reinstatement.
The coup is a direct violation of the OAS's Santiago Commitment to Democracy and the Renewal of the Inter-American System. By adopting that Commitment during a 1991 meeting in Chile's capital, countries of the hemisphere established a mechanism for collective action in the case of a sudden or irregular interruption of the democratic political institutional process or of the legitimate exercise of power by the democratically elected government in any of the Organization's member states.
This commitment was reaffirmed in 2001, in the Inter-American Democratic Charter, which requires the suspension from the OAS of states where elected governments have been found to be illegally overturned.
So why did the Honduran armed forces, backed by the legislature and the supreme court, take what they knew would be a much-criticized action? The U.S. press has stressed the attempt by President Zelaya to change the rules on re-election and the close ties between Venezuela and Honduras.
But that's only a small piece of the story.
The re-election effort was part of a larger package. Its centerpiece was a call for a popular referendum on whether or not to call a Constitutional Convention. Had the referendum, which was supported by labor, peasant, environmental, and human rights groups, passed, Honduras would have joined Latin American countries including Colombia, Ecuador, and Bolivia, that had rewritten their constitutions after a broad-based (more or less) constitutional rewriting process.
These processes have been tumultuous and highly controversial elsewhere. But on the positive side, they have:
► Broken existing political logjams and dysfunction;
► Established broad rights for indigenous communities; and
► Set the stage for institutional reforms to protect land and the environment and to give the government greater control over resource policies, especially mining and forest projects. These projects, many sponsored by U.S. and Canadian companies, have affected water and other resources and generated widespread local opposition.
Indeed, there are movements afoot in other countries, like Chile, to use upcoming elections to push for a constitutional convention to remake the Pinochet-era constitution there (not to mention efforts in California to call a constitutional convention to remake our own dysfunctional, gridlocked and almost-broke system of government!).
That's what was at stake in Honduras, and why the powers supporting the status quo were willing to brave international criticism to try to derail a new constitution-building initiative.

'Nuff said

(Taking context-optional note of thought-provoking quotes)

'The Cold War has ended this day in San Pedro Sula. We begin a new era of fraternity and tolerance.'

-- Manuel Zelaya at a meeting of the Organization of American States in that town in the country of which he is President, Honduras. There yesterday national foreign ministers voted to revoke Resolution VI (quoted on page 12), which had effected the explusion of Cuba from OAS membership in 1962. (For another important development at that meeting, see post above.) As set out in the Spanish text, yesterday's resolution resolved that Cuba could resume participation in the OAS following "a process of dialogue initiated by the Government of Cuba and conducted in conformity with the practices, propositions and principles of the OAS." Though U.S. efforts to attach more conditions had failed, "[t]he decision was taken by consensus, meaning the United States accepted it," in the words of the Associated Press.

On November 5

On this day in ...

... 2003 (5 years ago today), in Colombo, Sri Lanka, President Chandrika Kumaratunga declared a state of emergency, thus "giving herself sweeping powers to ban assemblies, detain people without cause and censor news reports" for a period of 10 days. The move came a day after she "suspended the country's Parliament, took control of the powerful Defense, Interior and Media ministries and deployed a small number of troops at key government buildings." Kumaratunga (right) had been President -- the 1st woman to hold that post -- since 1994. She would leave office in 2005, after failing to persuade the Sri Lankan Supreme Court she should be permitted to stay an additional year.

... 1838 (170 years ago today), a 15-year-old alliance known as the United Provinces of Central America began to dissolve when 1 of its members, Honduras (left), withdrew and became an independent republic. (map credit)

Bounded dispute

Check out the ASIL Insight by Pieter H.F. Bekker and Ana Stanic respecting this month's judgment in which the International Court of Justice resolved a Central American boundaries dispute dating from decolonization 8 decades ago.
Upon winning independence from Spain in 1821, Nicaragua and Honduras disagreed on the ownership of 4 islands. (map courtesy of ASIL Insights) Periodic arbitration efforts failed to resolve the matter. In this month's judgment, Case Concerning Territorial and Maritime Disputes between Nicaragua and Honduras in the Caribbean Sea (Nicaragua v. Honduras), the ICJ unanimously awarded sovereignty of the islands to the applicant, Nicaragua. Bekker and Stanic note that in so doing the court clarified the framework for settling such disputes -- and thus may ease resolution of pending cases involving Nicaragua and Colombia, Nicaragua and Costa Rica, Romania and Ukraine, Namibia and South Africa, and Japan and China.