By Brendan Sweeney
The revision of the country’s environmental laws, which is part of the project Toward the Consolidation of the Judicial System in Honduras, was approved in late December 2009, and it is expected that the law revision package will be presented to the National Congress for discussion and approval in 2010.
Started in 2004, the project is the fruit of a collaboration between the Danish Institute for Human Rights (DIHR) and several institutions in Honduras. It achieved its first success in 2008 when a law revision package in the area of Family and Childhood was presented to the National Congress to the acclaim of congress members.
The environment is also a crucial area of concern for a country such as Honduras, which is regularly struck by tropical storms. Eleven years ago, Hurricane Mitch, the deadliest hurricane to hit the Western Hemisphere in over two centuries, caused untold destruction in Honduras killing thousands and driving as many as 700,000 people from their homes.
Annali Kristiansen, Project Manager at DIHR in Copenhagen, believes that the law revision project, which had examined 4,547 documents from international and regional treaties to national law by August 2009, is essential to the reform process in Honduras:
“The long term focus of this project is to create a culture of human rights and human rights based law reform in Honduras. It is excellent that all legislation in Honduras has been mapped; such an overview could lead to better legislation in the future and help to bolster the rule of law. Each revision of an area requires its own specific methodology. It was easier to carry out the revision of family law, because there already was a coherent series of laws on the subject, but environmental law revision was more difficult.”
“Our hope is that the resources required in terms of knowledge and experience for law revision will be developed by Hondurans locally and that the rule of law, transparency and accountability and access to justice will be improved,” she stated.
Human Rights Officer, Javier Lopez, who is based in Honduras, sees the project as a way of creating harmonization and avoiding poorly-formulated legislation:
“Because of badly formulated legal texts there is a lack of conceptual definition in the Honduran judicial system, which means that the authorities have a lot of discretion when interpreting and applying the law. There was also insufficient attention paid to previous legislation which resulted in imprecise revisions and reforms. The revision project has done a lot to improve this situation with regard to laws relating to the family and now the environment,” he said.
In addition to a team nominated by their institutions in Honduras, the DIHR team includes Annali Kristiansen and Javier Lopez, who is based in Honduras.
For further information, please contact Brendan Sweeney at
