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Honduras finds itself in the midst of an ongoing anti-corruption movement. In late October the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights held a session on judicial independence in Honduras and the OAS is advancing plans to install an international Mission of Support in Combating Corruption in the country, albeit amid criticism. These steps were prompted by months of weekly torch-lit marches that drew tens of thousands to the streets through August of this year. The impressive “Indignados” marches called for President Juan Orlando Hernandez’s resignation over corruption charges, the OAS’s help in weeding out criminal behavior in the State, and broader reforms that would ensure separation of government powers.
But lurking in the background of these debates on how to build accountability and democracy in in the country is the specter of Honduras’ proposed Economic Development and Employment Zones (ZEDEs), popularly referred to as ‘model cities’ by Hondurans.
ZEDEs represent an aggressive form of special economic zone in which investors and international overseers can create semi-autonomous, highly privatized city-states designed to be legally, judicially and administratively independent from the structures of the Honduran state.
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Internationally, many heard of these plans as “charter cities,” proposed by U.S. economist Paul Romer back in 2009. The idea to create charter cities took force after the 2009 military coup that ousted President Manuel Zelaya opened Honduran markets further and aimed to make the country the most attractive place to invest in the Americas.
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This film, on the ZEDEs of Honduras, so-called model cities where control is ceded to foreign investors, was... https://t.co/kx9Hy1NnA8
— NLG International (@NLGIC)
octubre 29, 2015
Romer has since abandoned his efforts in Honduras, but the charter city vision has passed through various transformations, marked by legal and procedural anomalies and secrecy. The initial law passed to govern these zones, the Law for Special Development Regions (REDs for their acronym in Spanish), was declared unconstitutional by the Honduran Supreme Court in 2012, largely due to concern over the fragmentation of sovereign Honduran national territory that the law entailed.
About two months later, the four judges who voted to overturn the RED law were removed in what many refer to as a technical coup by the Honduran Congress, who circumvented the country’s legal procedures to replace them. Óscar Chinchilla, the one judge who voted to uphold the RED Law and who was spared removal by congress was later named Attorney General by current President Juan Orlando Hernández. Calls for Chinchilla’s resignation over corruption allegations have been part of current pro-democracy efforts.While the current ZEDE Law’s (Decree #120-2013) history underscores the dire need for accountability and judicial reform in Honduras, the law’s very existence threatens to undermine any strides that would be made in this regard. The law allows each ZEDE to establish its own judicial system, which would have “exclusive competence” and would not be subject to appeals in the Constitutional Chamber of the Honduran Supreme Court. The zone’s judges would be approved by the Federal Council of the Judiciary from a list of candidates provided by an international body called the Committee for the Adoption of Best Practices, circumventing the country’s constitutional procedures for nominating and approving judges. In 2013, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Freedom of Expression and Opinion stated that the creation of autonomous judiciaries in the ZEDEs would violate Hondurans’ right to access to justice.
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Many more concerns exist regarding the democratic rights of Hondurans within future ZEDEs. Who will govern the zones and under what procedures? While the ZEDE law leaves some ambiguity, a few structures are clear. The law provides substantial governance powers to the aforementioned commission, charged with promoting the zones’ economic development and expansion. In addition to recommending judges, the commission determines the zones’ internal laws and norms, appoints an administrator to each – the Technical Secretary- and can remove said administrator according to their discretion.
The commission is also stacked with advocates from some of the primary organizations credited with the spread of neoliberal economic ideology and policies around the world, including the Mont Pelerin Institute, the CATO Institute, the Hayek Institute, and former members of Ronald Reagan’s administration. Of the 21 commission members, nine are from the U.S. and include Republican political advocates Grover Norquist and Morton Blackwell, as well as a son of Ronald Reagan. Only four members are Honduran, and they include former president Ricardo Maduro and one of the ZEDEs main visionaries, Ebal Díaz. The commission’s four European members include the co-CEO of Saxo Bank, Lars Seier Christensen, and Gabriela von Habsburg, the Archduchess of the Habsburg dynasty of Austria. Given the actors involved, the commission is likely to promote not international best practices in human rights, but best practices for securing investor rights and promoting free market norms. Concerns over what this means for affected communities is exacerbated by the ZEDE Law’s expansion of eminent domain to allow for the expropriation of lands for private projects.
Great @ForeignPolicy piece on land grabs in #Honduras https://t.co/lAfq11xICB ht @Sandra_Cuffe @ofraneh #landrights pic.twitter.com/01jHuu5UR3
— David Kaimowitz (@DKaimowitz)
octubre 28, 2015
Where does this leave Honduran citizens? While the RED Law previously mandated the zone’s eventual return to democratic rule, the ZEDE law provides no such path toward democratization of the zone, leaving residents previously under the jurisdiction of elected municipal governments without the right to local democratic governance. Likewise, the Committee for the Adoption of Best Practices’ membership is functionally determined by the committee itself: the Honduran Congress can only ratify or refuse to ratify replacement members to the 21 member board, not nominate. With no requirements for consultation or consent in the majority of cases, local citizens may find these rights usurped from them from one day to the next, with little possibility for recourse. Decisions made in Congress and by the executive, where zone residents would still have electoral representation, would nonetheless have little impact on policies within the independent zones. Thus, while Hondurans living in ZEDEs will still hold a Honduran passport and ID card, substantively-speaking their status as citizens would be left tenuous at best.
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As the fight for reforms continues, ZEDEs have become the elephant in the room. What Hondurans are now attempting to construct collectively through protest and public pressure would not apply to a potentially substantial part of the national territory if ZEDEs were to get off the ground. ZEDEs have recently taken a back seat to public attention on high profile corruption and money laundering scandals, but they are of paramount concern to the future of democracy and citizenship in Honduras.
One participant in a recent gathering of southern-based community organizations in Honduras expressed the larger problem facing Honduran society: “We will have to decide, do we want a homeland or a colony? A State or a company?”
Tyler Ingraham is a law student Western New England University and a National Lawyers Guild Haywood Burns Fellow. Since participating in the NLG delegation to Honduras in 2014, he has researched the ZEDEs and their implications for human rights in Honduras.
