Honduras
Mine Ban Policy
The Republic of Honduras signed the Mine Ban Treaty on 3 December 1997 and ratified it on 24 September 1998, becoming a State Party on 1 March 1999. Honduras is not known to have used, produced, or exported antipersonnel mines. Legislation to enforce the antipersonnel mine prohibition domestically was adopted on 29 June 2000. Honduras submitted its sixth Mine Ban Treaty Article 7 report on 24 April 2007 but has not provided subsequent annual reports.
Honduras completed destruction of its stockpile of 7,441 antipersonnel mines on 2 November 2000. Honduras initially retained 826 antipersonnel mines for training purposes; this number was reduced to 815 in 2005. It is not known if any mines have been consumed during training activities in 2005–2010.
Honduras served as co-rapporteur and then co-chair of the Standing Committee on Victim Assistance and Socio-economic Reintegration in 2000–2002.
Honduras did not attend any Mine Ban Treaty meetings in 2010 or the first half of 2011.
Honduras is party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons and its Amended Protocol II on landmines. It joined Protocol V on explosive remnants of war on 16 August 2010.
Honduras was contaminated by mines and unexploded ordnance along its borders with El Salvador and Nicaragua, the result of armed conflict in those two countries in the 1980s. Honduras completed its national demining program in 2004.
Cluster Munition Ban Policy
Policy
The Republic of Honduras signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions on 3 December 2008, ratified on 21 March 2012, and the convention entered into force for Honduras on 1 September 2012.
It is not known if specific legislation will be undertaken to ensure implementation of the convention. In 2010, an official indicated that some aspects of the convention may already be covered by existing legislation, such as a 2004 decree on firearms and explosives.[1]
As of 27 June 2014, Honduras had not submitted its initial Convention on Cluster Munitions Article 7 report, originally due by 28 February 2013.
Honduras played an active role in the Oslo Process that created the convention.[2] It has continued to support the work of the convention, participating in most of its meetings. Honduras attended the Fourth Meeting of States Parties in Lusaka in September 2013.[3] Honduras participated in intersessional meetings of the convention held in Geneva in 2011–2013, but not those held in April 2014.
Honduras participated in a regional workshop on cluster munitions in Santiago, Chile in December 2013.
Honduras voted in favor of a UN General Assembly (UNGA) resolution condemning the Syrian government’s use of cluster munitions, including Resolution 68/182 on 18 December 2013, which expressed “outrage” at Syria’s “continued widespread and systematic gross violations of human rights…including those involving the use of…cluster munitions.”[4]
Honduras is a State Party to the Mine Ban Treaty. It is also party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons.
Use, production, transfer, and stockpiling
Honduras is not known to have used or produced cluster munitions.
In December 2007, Honduras declared that it does not possess cluster munitions.[5] According to officials, the stockpile of air-dropped Rockeye cluster bombs and an unidentified type of artillery-delivered cluster munitions were destroyed before 2007.[6] According to United States (US) export records, Honduras imported 120 Rockeye cluster bombs at some point between 1970 and 1995.[7]
[1] In October 2004, Congress passed the Law on Firearms, Munitions, Explosives and other Similar Objects Control (Decree 30-2000). Telephone interview with Ivon Bonilla, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 10 March 2010. In June 2000, Honduras adopted legislation to implement the Mine Ban Treaty, Decree No. 60-2000. See ICBL, Landmine Monitor Report 2004: Toward a Mine-Free World (New York: Human Rights Watch, August 2004), p. 487.
[2] For more information on Honduras’ policy and practice regarding cluster munitions through early 2009, see Human Rights Watch and Landmine Action, Banning Cluster Munitions: Government Policy and Practice (Ottawa: Mines Action Canada, May 2009), p. 89.
[3] It did not attend the convention’s First Meeting of States Parties in Vientiane, Lao PDR in November 2010 or the Third Meeting of States Parties in Oslo, Norway in September 2012.
[4] “Situation of human rights in the Syrian Arab Republic,” UNGA Resolution 68/182, 18 December 2013. Honduras voted in favor of a similar resolution on 15 May 2013.
[5] Statement of Honduras, Vienna Conference on Cluster Munitions, 5 December 2007. Notes by the CMC/Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF).
[6] Human Rights Watch (HRW) meetings with Honduran officials, San José, 5 September 2007, and Vienna, 3–5 December 2007.
[7] US Defense Security Cooperation Agency, Department of Defense, “Cluster Bomb Exports under FMS, FY1970–FY1995,” obtained by HRW in a Freedom of Information Act request, 28 November 1995.