IV 
118TH CONGRESS 
2D SESSION 
H. RES. 1278 
Affirming the importance of the survival of Garı´funa culture and identity, 
condemning the violent and illegal appropriation of Garı´funa territory, 
urging the Department of State and multilateral development banks 
to respect the rights of the Garı´funa people, and calling on the Govern-
ment of Honduras to fully comply with the resolutions of multilateral 
human rights bodies which mandate the return of Garı´funa land and 
territory, and for other purposes. 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
JUNE 5, 2024 
Ms. BUSH (for herself, Mr. BOWMAN, Mr. GARCI´A of Illinois, Ms. OMAR, and 
Ms. SCHAKOWSKY) submitted the following resolution; which was referred 
to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, and in addition to the Committee 
on Financial Services, for a period to be subsequently determined by the 
Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within 
the jurisdiction of the committee concerned 
RESOLUTION 
Affirming the importance of the survival of Garı´funa culture 
and identity, condemning the violent and illegal appro-
priation of Garı´funa territory, urging the Department 
of State and multilateral development banks to respect 
the rights of the Garı´funa people, and calling on the 
Government of Honduras to fully comply with the resolu-
tions of multilateral human rights bodies which mandate 
the return of Garı´funa land and territory, and for other 
purposes. 
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•HRES 1278 IH 
Whereas the United States and the Republic of Honduras 
share an important relationship, which includes deep and 
long standing economic, social, and cultural ties; 
Whereas the Afro-Indigenous Garı´funa people, descendants of 
the Arawak Indigenous people of St. Vincent Island and 
of African castaways destined to be sold into slavery in 
the Americas, are 1 of 9 Indigenous peoples of Honduras; 
Whereas the Afro-Indigenous Garı´funa territory that has 
stretched along the Caribbean coast of Honduras since 
before the nation was declared independent from Spain 
on September 15, 1821, is the ancestral home of the ma-
jority of the world’s Garı´funa, and as such is essential to 
the cultural survival and well-being of the Garı´funa peo-
ple; 
Whereas the Government of Honduras ratified the Inter- 
American Convention on Human Rights on September 5, 
1977, and the Constitution of Honduras establishes that 
the human rights treaties to which Honduras is a party 
are considered to hold the same legal effect as the Con-
stitution, and therefore the judgments of the Inter-Amer-
ican Court of Human Rights are binding on the Govern-
ment of Honduras; 
Whereas the presence of diverse Garı´funa immigrant commu-
nities in the United States has been recorded by oral his-
tory and scholarly research since the early 20th century 
and has long contributed to the cultural diversity that 
we, as a Nation, so deeply cherish; 
Whereas, on September 4, 2020, the coordinator of the Black 
Fraternal Organization of Honduras (OFRANEH) pub-
licly denounced a third wave of violent dispossession 
against the Garı´funa people and signaled that special de-
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•HRES 1278 IH 
velopment zones, the massive production of African palm 
cultivation, and tourism enclaves are drivers of the de-
struction of Garı´funa life in Honduras; 
Whereas Garı´funa communities have been heavily impacted 
by the effects of climate change, manifesting in droughts, 
coastal erosion, and floods during hurricane season that 
have caused irreversible damage to communities, disrup-
tion of food availability, and forced migration; 
Whereas, since 2018, there have been more than 150 
Garı´funa people killed, 37 criminalized, and 5 forcibly 
disappeared for defending their ancestral lands and terri-
tories from corrupt economic and political interests, 
which form a part of institutional and systemic racism 
that manifests in police brutality, illegal detentions, har-
assment by local authorities, and forced displacement; 
Whereas the experience of forced and systematic displace-
ment has emptied communities and put Garı´funa identity 
and survival as a differentiated ethnic unit in Honduras 
at risk; 
Whereas the Garı´funa communities along the northern coast 
of Honduras are located in territories disputed by orga-
nized crime that, driven by consumer demand in the 
United States, has converted much of these territories 
into drug laboratories and cocaine plantations, and is re-
sponsible for multiple threats, disappearances, and mur-
ders of Garı´funa defenders; 
Whereas the Government of Honduras and its judiciary have 
engaged in a pattern of falsely accusing the Indigenous 
people of the north coast of engaging in drug trans-ship-
ment as justification for violating their fundamental 
rights, including the right to life and liberty, and the 
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•HRES 1278 IH 
Honduran military forces have engaged in a pattern of 
deadly use of force against Garı´funa and other Indige-
nous peoples of the Caribbean coast with similar jus-
tifications; 
Whereas the former President of Honduras, Juan Orlando 
Hernandez, was extradited to the United States on April 
21, 2022, and convicted on March 8, 2024, of Federal 
charges relating to his use of public office, law enforce-
ment, and the military to facilitate major drug-trafficking 
operations along the north coast from 2004 to 2022; 
Whereas testimony given in 2019 during the trial of the 
former Honduran President’s brother, Tony Hernandez, 
also directly implicated then-Security Minister Julian 
Pacheco in drug trafficking carried out along the north 
coast; 
Whereas the United States provided Honduras with millions 
of dollars in security aid throughout the Hernandez Pres-
idency and continues to train Honduran military units on 
the northern coast of Honduras, including at bases such 
as the 15th Battalion and 4th Naval Base that have been 
implicated in serious human rights abuses and corruption 
associated with organized criminal activity; 
Whereas, on June 21, 2012, the Inter-American Development 
Bank (IDB) signed a $60,000,000 loan agreement with 
Hernandez’s Security Minister Julian Pacheco that was 
used to finance the creation of the new Direccio´n Policial 
de Investigaciones (DPI) of the Honduran National Po-
lice, among other Honduran security forces activities; 
Whereas, in September 2013, the Hernandez-aligned legisla-
ture passed the Organic Law of the Employment and 
Economic Development Zones (ZEDE), which authorized 
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•HRES 1278 IH 
foreign companies to create quasi-sovereign private gov-
ernance zones within Honduras and establish their own 
laws, courts, and police force, among other powers; 
Whereas this law declared coastal departments consisting of 
large swaths of Garı´funa and other Indigenous territory 
as ‘‘low-population zones’’ subject to the imposition of a 
ZEDE without community consultation and consent; 
Whereas, since 2012, Garı´funa communities have actively re-
sisted the development of the ZEDE ‘‘Prospera’’ and the 
associated areas of ‘‘Port Royal’’ and ‘‘St. John’s Bay’’ 
on the Honduran island of Roatan, which were estab-
lished without community consent and which threaten the 
local population with the disbanding of ancestral, collec-
tive land titles and the displacement of the Garı´funa peo-
ple; 
Whereas, on March 18, 2021, the Port of Satuye´, located in 
the Garı´funa communities of Sambo Creek and Corozal, 
was incorporated into ZEDE ‘‘Prospera’’; 
Whereas, on April 21, 2022, following months of national 
protest, the newly elected Honduran Congress voted to 
unanimously repeal the ZEDE law but has yet to ratify 
the repeal of a ZEDE-related constitutional provision; 
Whereas ZEDEs remain an existential threat to the Garı´funa 
people, as the ‘‘Prospera’’ ZEDE on the island of Roatan 
continues to expand and as the Delaware-based company 
Prospera, Inc., pursues an abusive $11,000,000,000 law-
suit against the state of Honduras challenging the repeal 
of the ZEDE law under the Dominican Republic-Central 
America-United States Free Trade Agreement; 
Whereas tourist complex projects such as Indura Beach Re-
sort, Shores Plantations, Marbella, Playa Escondida, and 
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•HRES 1278 IH 
Rosa Negra operate under a modality that resembles the 
ZEDE and displaces the Garı´funa people; 
Whereas the United States controls 15.49 percent of the 
Board of Directors of the World Bank and 30 percent of 
the Board of Directors of the IDB, and uses its voice to 
exert a significant degree of influence on the decisions of 
these institutions; 
Whereas, on June 12, 2007, in response to a complaint from 
OFRANEH describing the potential and already con-
summated illegal disenfranchisement of Garı´funa land 
rights facilitated by World Bank-supported projects, the 
World Bank Inspection Panel found that the safeguards 
provided for the project were not adequate to protect 
Garı´funa rights to their ethnic lands, while observing that 
the Garı´funa communities did not have a meaningful op-
tion to opt out of the project; 
Whereas, on December 8, 2008, the Board of Directors of 
the International Finance Corporation (IFC) approved a 
$30,000,000 loan to the Dinant Corporation, whose sup-
ply chain includes palm oil from plantations in areas 
claimed by Garı´funa communities, including Punta 
Piedra, despite publicly available information implicating 
the company in violent land disputes, illegal appropria-
tion of Garı´funa land, and reports of drug trafficking on 
land controlled by the Dinant Corporation; 
Whereas, in May 2011, the IFC’s Board of Directors ap-
proved an equity and subordinated debt investment in 
Banco Ficohsa, which acted as a financial intermediary 
of the IFC to provide further financing to the Dinant 
Corporation following international outcry over the in-
volvement of that company’s security forces in violence 
stemming from land rights disputes, and whose supply 
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•HRES 1278 IH 
chain includes palm oil from plantations in areas claimed 
by Garı´funa communities, including Punta Piedra and 
Triunfo de la Cruz; 
Whereas the United States Overseas Private Investment Cor-
poration, whose holdings have been transferred to the 
United States International Development Finance Cor-
poration, approved on March 17, 2014, the financing of 
the Jaremar palm oil corporation, whose supply chain in-
cludes palm oil from plantations in areas claimed by 
Garı´funa communities, including Triunfo de la Cruz; 
Whereas, in October 2016, in response to a complaint from 
OFRANEH, the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman of the 
IFC initiated a compliance review of a tourism complex 
developed with land and resources from the territory of 
the Garı´funa communities of Barra Vieja, Tornabe, San 
Juan Tela, and Triunfo de la Cruz, a project that at-
tracted, and continued to seek, investment from corpora-
tions in the United States; 
Whereas, on February 1, 2006, the Inter-American Court of 
Human Rights ruled that the rights to personal liberty, 
to a fair trial and to judicial protections, to freedom of 
thought and expression, and to personal integrity of the 
then-president of the Land Defense Committee of the 
Garı´funa community of Triunfo de la Cruz and vice 
president of OFRANEH had been violated by his arbi-
trary imprisonment for a period of 6 years and 4 months; 
Whereas, on October 8, 2015, the Inter-American Court of 
Human Rights ruled that the Government of Honduras 
had violated the rights of the communities of Triunfo de 
la Cruz and Punta Piedra, and had failed to investigate 
acts of violence against the communities, ordering the 
restitution of land rights to the communities and the ef-
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•HRES 1278 IH 
fective investigation of the violent deaths of 4 community 
members of Triunfo de la Cruz and 1 community mem-
ber of Punta Piedra; 
Whereas, on November 5, 2019, in a statement to a local 
Honduran publication, OFRANEH condemned the death 
of 16 Garı´funa people, including 6 women, highlighting 
the murder of Mirna Suazo Martinez, president of the 
board of the Garı´funa community of Masca, who was 
leading the defense of Masca’s rivers and territory in op-
position to the construction of a hydroelectric plant, and 
who had made public statements describing several 
threats against her a few days before her murder; 
Whereas, on July 18, 2020, 4 Garı´funa men from Triunfo de 
la Cruz, including the president of the Community Devel-
opment Committee who had led the community’s recent 
efforts to stop the illegal appropriation of Garı´funa land 
and demanded that the Honduran Government imple-
ment the 2015 Inter-American Court of Human Rights 
ruling, were abducted at gunpoint by men wearing uni-
forms bearing the logo of the DPI National Police unit 
and have not been located since; 
Whereas, on November 11, 2020, the families of the dis-
appeared and the Garı´funa communities, outraged by the 
lack of investigation into the whereabouts of the victims 
of the July 18, 2020, forced disappearances, created the 
Comite´ Garı´funa de Investigacio´n y Bu´squeda de los 
Desaparecidos de Triunfo de la Cruz (SUNLA), an inde-
pendent commission to investigate and bring about the 
prosecution of the crime; 
Whereas, on March 3, 2021, sisters Marianela and Jennifer 
Mejı´a Solo´rzano were the first to be arrested as a result 
of criminal proceedings brought by the Public Prosecu-
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•HRES 1278 IH 
tor’s Office against over 30 Garı´funa rights defenders for 
alleged land theft, despite the land in question belonging 
to the Garı´funa communities of Cristales and Rı´o Negro; 
Whereas, in a communique´, OFRANEH stated that on Au-
gust 9, 2022, the organization visited the Public Prosecu-
tor’s Office and demanded progress in the investigation 
of the July 18, 2020, forced disappearances from Triunfo 
de la Cruz, but instead of reporting on the investigation 
and prosecution of those responsible for the forced dis-
appearances, the Attorney General’s office, in another 
episode of persecution, harassment, and criminalization, 
instructed the Prosecutor’s Office Against Common 
Crimes and the Technical Agency for Criminal Investiga-
tion (ATIC) to initiate criminal proceedings against 
OFRANEH’s General Coordinator Miriam Miranda, 
OFRANEH member Luther Castillo, and OFRANEH 
lawyer Edy Tabora; 
Whereas, on September 19, 2023, an armed group of men 
entered the home of Miriam Miranda in Vallecito, Colon, 
in an ongoing pattern of intimidation that was utilized 
against Berta Ca´ceres right before her murder; 
Whereas, on February 2, 2024, the Government of Honduras, 
acting through the Honduran Cabinet, decreed the cre-
ation of the High-Level Intersectoral Commission for the 
Compliance of the Commitments and Recommendations 
issued by the International Human Rights Protection 
Systems (Commission), with the objective of ensuring the 
rights of Garı´funa communities to their collective prop-
erty, judicial protection and guarantees, right to life, and 
all other human rights protections; and 
Whereas, on March 9, 2024, a group of defenders of the 
Triunfo de la Cruz community who carried out a peaceful 
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•HRES 1278 IH 
march to demand compliance with the Inter-American 
Court of Human Rights judgment in favor of their com-
munity faced intimidation by third parties who illegally 
occupy Garı´funa territories: Now, therefore, be it 
Resolved, That the House of Representatives— 
(1) condemns the violence against Garı´funa 
communities, specifically against Garı´funa land 
rights defenders; 
(2) 
calls 
for 
the 
Comite´
Garı´funa 
de 
Investigacio´n y Bu´squeda de los Desaparecidos de 
Triunfo de la Cruz’s (SUNLA) full participation in 
the investigation into the whereabouts of Sneider 
Centeno, Milton Joel Martinez, Suami Aparicio, and 
Gerardo Trochez, and the prosecution of those re-
sponsible for their disappearance; 
(3) calls for the creation of an effective and 
independent office for a Special Prosecutor for En-
forced Disappearances in Honduras; 
(4) condemns the illegal separation of Garı´funa 
communities from their legitimate land rights; 
(5) calls for the swift and full implementation 
of the October 8, 2015, ruling of the Inter-American 
Court of Human Rights that obliges the Government 
of Honduras to restore land rights to the commu-
nities of Triunfo de la Cruz and Punta Piedra, and 
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•HRES 1278 IH 
to investigate the murder of 5 members of both com-
munities; 
(6) strongly disapproves of the decisions of mul-
tilateral development banks that finance projects 
that contribute to the extinction of the legitimate 
land rights of Garı´funa communities and finance se-
curity forces involved in serious human rights viola-
tions; 
(7) is concerned that United States bilateral as-
sistance to Honduras may jeopardize or otherwise 
contribute to the violation of the fundamental rights 
of Garı´funa communities; 
(8) urges the Government of Honduras to— 
(A) fully and immediately comply with the 
2015 judgment of the Inter-American Court of 
Human Rights restoring land rights to the com-
munities of Triunfo de la Cruz and Punta 
Piedra and investigating the murders of 5 
members of both communities, including by 
fully implementing the International Human 
Rights Protection Systems (Commission); 
(B) grant SUNLA formal status in the in-
vestigation of the forced disappearance of 
Sneider Centeno and 3 other Garı´funa men 
from Triunfo de la Cruz; and 
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•HRES 1278 IH 
(C) establish a Special Prosecutor for En-
forced Disappearances within the Prosecutor’s 
Office; 
(9) requests the institutions of the World Bank 
Group and the Inter-American Development Bank 
to— 
(A) immediately suspend funding for any 
project that may contribute to violence against 
Garı´funa communities or violations of their 
human rights and consult with the affected 
communities on possible corrective measures; 
(B) identify measures that the institutions 
could implement to promote compliance with 
the 2015 judgments of the Inter-American 
Court of Human Rights, acting on the meas-
ures only after full consultation with and con-
sent of the legitimate authorities of the 
Garı´funa communities; 
(C) undertake a comprehensive and inde-
pendent review of the projects that any such in-
stitution has supported over the past 25 years 
that have an impact on the land rights of Indig-
enous communities or have otherwise contrib-
uted to human rights violations in Honduras, 
and publish a report with their findings; 
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•HRES 1278 IH 
(D) carefully review their loan portfolios, 
and the structure for on-the-ground implemen-
tation of those projects, in order to identify 
funding that may benefit government agencies 
implicated in human rights violations, violence, 
and dispossession directed against Indigenous 
communities in Honduras; and 
(E) ensure compliance with the provisions 
of the International Labour Organization Con-
vention 169 regarding prior consultation before 
the approval of projects that affect the commu-
nities, and the completion of the respective envi-
ronmental impact studies for each project; and 
(10) urges the Secretary of State, the Secretary 
of the Treasury, and the Administrator of the 
United States Agency for International Develop-
ment, in coordination with the heads of other rel-
evant Federal departments and agencies, to— 
(A) engage at the highest level with the 
Government of Honduras, and maintain close 
coordination with international allies and multi-
lateral organizations with influence in Hon-
duras, to promote compliance with the resolu-
tions of the Inter-American Court of Human 
Rights, in particular the 2015 judgments to re-
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•HRES 1278 IH 
store the rights of the Garı´funa communities of 
Triunfo de la Cruz and Punta Piedra; 
(B) alert United States-based companies 
and other investors in Honduras to the risks 
and potential liabilities associated with invest-
ing in lands whose rights may have been illegit-
imately severed from Indigenous communities; 
and 
(C) use its vote and voice within multilat-
eral development banks to oppose any loans or 
technical assistance projects that may threaten 
the rights of Garı´funa communities, and to ad-
vocate for reparations for communities affected 
by multilateral development bank financing that 
have contributed to human rights violations, in 
accordance with international standards for rep-
arations. 
Æ 
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