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Twenty-two million fall into poverty in Latin America during 2020, UN finds
In its 2020 Social Panorama report issued Thursday, the UN Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) documents “unprecedented” social devastation during the COVID-19 pandemic, which set off the worst economic crisis in the region’s history.
After years with negligible economic growth since the end of the commodity boom in 2014, the region saw its GDP fall 7.7 percent last year. This is far worse than the 5 percent drop in 1930, at the height of the Great Depression, or the 4.9 percent drop in 1914 at the beginning of World War I.
How Honduras Complicates Biden’s Policy Reset in Central America
The longtime U.S. partner will test the administration’s anti-corruption push. Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández in an interview in January.ORLANDO SIERRA/AFP via Getty Images
A U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) investigation of a sitting president would usually come as something of a bombshell. But when news broke on Feb. 8 that federal prosecutors had begun investigating Honduras’ President Juan Orlando Hernández, it came as more of a formality. Hernández, or JOH, had already been implicated or directly accused of involvement in drug trafficking by U.S. prosecutors in multiple court filings over the last several years he had just made news for allegedly having said he wanted to “shove the drugs right up the noses of the gringos.”
Extractive industry is another reason migrants leave home
Hondurans kept their national flag at the front of the migrant caravan in Vado Hondo, Guatemala. | Photos by Sandra Cuffe
Francisco could have left his home in northeastern Honduras for any number of reasons. The coronavirus pandemic and related lockdown measures had put an end to his work as a bricklayer s assistant, which had earned him $8 a day. Two hurricanes then swept through the region late last year, destroying homes, crops, and infrastructure.
But the main reason Francisco fled Honduras was because of a mining project. An iron oxide mine under construction inside a national park just south of the city of Tocoa has sparked years of opposition, conflict, and violence in the area. Community residents have been protesting the mine to protect their river. Some are in jail. Others face threats. People have been killed.
HONDURAN women’s organisations have warned that their country has “gone back decades” after the parliament voted for a total ban on abortions.
Women took to the streets of the capital Tegucigalpa earlier this week after a law passed by three-quarters of the 128-member assembly granted a foetus the same status as a living person.
“The country has just gone back decades in terms of public policies in favour of the rights of women, who are often victims of violence and mistreatment,” Quality of Life spokeswoman Para Cruz said.
Women also voiced concerns over rising gender-based violence.
At least one in four women in the Central American country has suffered physical or sexual abuse, according to the violence observatory at the National Autonomous University of Honduras.