Latin Analysis: Land Rights And The Garífuna Struggle In Honduras
slice
The indigenous people of Honduras have long fought to protect their land rights, facing a government that has consistently failed to. For the Garífuna, an afro-indigenous community living along Honduras’ Caribbean coast, that failure manifests in restricted access to fishing grounds, displacement from ancestral islands, and years of unimplemented court rulings in their favour. A landmark Inter-American Court decision earlier this year has brought renewed attention to the issue, but the structural conditions enabling these rights violations continue to be a problem.
Who Are The Garífuna Community?
The Garífuna are an afro-indigenous people whose ancestral roots trace to the island of Saint Vincent, and after their arrival on the Honduran mainland in 1797, have lived along the northern Caribbean coast ever since. Their population in Honduras is estimated to be up to 100,000 people, with smaller communities also living in Belize, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. Traditionally, the Garífuna have relied on small-scale fishing and subsistence agriculture for their livelihoods, with their identity closely tied to their territory. The coast, sea, and land are not only resources, but the material foundation of social organisation and culture.
Those foundations have been under pressure for decades. Since around the late 20th century, expanding palm oil cultivation, tourism infrastructure, and hydroelectric projects have encroached on Garífuna land. Honduras is the second-largest palm oil producer in Latin America, and much of that cultivation has taken place in the departments of Atlántida and Colón, both considered part of Garífuna’s ancestral territory. Where fishing communities once farmed and fished, stretches of the coastline been converted for the purpose of industrial agriculture or sold to private developers. Notably, this is often done without the free, prior, and informed consent to the indigenous communities, as is required under international law.
Another problem that exacerbates this is the prevalence of criminal networks moving into coastal zones, occupying land previously used for subsistence farming and disrupting community life. The result, as Garífuna leaders have described it, is a community fighting a war for their survival across multiple fronts.
The Risks Faced By Land Rights And Environmental Defenders
The legal framework for protecting land rights in Honduras is weak and poorly enforced. Many indigenous and afro-descendant communities condemn the Honduran government for failing to adequately recognise or protect their collective land rights – this consequently leaves them exposed to displacement by private investors, agribusinesses, and state-backed development projects.
This failing has been consistently flagged by international bodies. For example, the Garífuna organisation OFRANEH (the Honduran Black Fraternal Organisation) was founded in 1978 in part to pursue such legal claims. After years of unsuccessful attempts in domestic courts, the organisation took three cases to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights that won. They entailed rulings in favour of the communities of Triunfo de la Cruz and Punta Piedra in 2015, and San Juan in 2023, which ordered the Honduran state to restore land rights and provide reparations. However, none of those rulings have been fully implemented. In February 2024, Honduras created a special high-level commission, called CIANCSI, to help coordinate compliance with support from the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights – however, it is unclear whether it will be effective.
Those who fight against land encroachment do so at serious risk to themselves, as Honduras remains one of the deadliest countries in the world for land and environmental defenders and activists. Global Witness recorded five killings and one disappearance of land and environmental defenders in 2024, including three members of peasant communities in the Bajo Aguán valley. One of the most internationally prominent cases was the killing of Lenca activist Berta Cáceres in 2016. She co-founded an NGO for indigenous rights and led resistance against a hydroelectric dam project on the Gualcarque River, vital to the Lenca community. In 2024 and 2025, Honduras' Supreme Court upheld convictions for eight individuals involved in her murder, a partial step toward accountability that COPINH maintains is incomplete. Ten years on, Global Witness has described Cáceres’ case as a symbol of both the dangers facing defenders and the structural impunity that allows such violence to persist.
Recent Tensions
In March 2026, a new ruling was issued by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights against Honduras, this time concerning the Cayos Cochinos Garífuna community. Cayos Cochinos is a small archipelago in the Caribbean that is home to around 1,000 Garífuna families, which have lived there for over two centuries. The court found that Honduras had violated the community's collective property rights and right to political participation by declaring the archipelago a protected natural area in 2003 without a proper consultation. Management of the area was handed to the Cayos Cochinos Foundation, an arrangement that excluded the Garífuna from decisions over their territory. On top of this, the Cayos Cochinos Foundation has reportedly threatened community members who protest the situation.
The islands are a filming location for the Spanish-language version of the reality television programme ‘Survivor’, broadcast in Spain by Telecinco. During production, Garífuna residents were barred from entering the area. The court found that these filming arrangements had directly violated community rights, by restricting fishing, disrupting access to marine resources, and limiting the Garífuna people’s movement within their own land.
The court ordered Honduras to guarantee Garífuna participation in the administration and management planning of the protected area, pay compensation for damages, and investigate threats made against protesters. It is uncertain whether this ruling will achieve more than its predecessors, as the past points to a pattern of non-compliance with Inter-American Court decisions.
Meanwhile, Garífuna organisations have continued to press their demands through political channels. At the April 2026 national assembly marking the community’s 229th anniversary in Honduras, Afro-Honduran leaders issued a formal position paper calling for full compliance with all Inter-American Court rulings. They called for the extension of that jurisprudence to all 48 Garífuna communities. The community leaders addressed the incoming government led by Nasry Asfura directly, framing Afro-Honduran communities as potential partners in national development in a way that meaningfully includes them.
The Garífuna case illustrates a broader failure by the government, that despite multiple favourable court rulings, the government lacks the institutional will or capacity to implement them. Until enforcement catches up and defenders can organize without fear, the distance between formal land rights and the reality of Honduras indigenous communities of will remain.