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.

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.