Post #1

On January 17, 2020, in Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, national lawmakers extended an anti corruption mission according to this Associated Press article. The name of the mission is the "Mission to Support the Fight against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras", and it's goal was to uncover the misuse of public funds. This mission was supposed to end January 12th, 2020, but according to the Honduran government's statement, "We did not reach a consensus on signing a new covenant between Honduras and the Organization of American States secretary general." This commission was established by the Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez in 2015 because the public demanded that he resign after it was revealed that millions of dollars for the country's social security system were unjustly held. This commission was composed of international lawyers and investigators was to be active for four years. During these four years, the commission found that, "...networks of legislative and non-profit front organizations that moved public monies back into lawmakers’ pockets."(Gonzales, Sherman) In essence, when the commission found this out, it angered the country's lawmakers and they "...threw up hurdles to prevent the country's prosecutors from advancing the cases. They also reduced legal sentences for corruption-related crimes and essentially blocked the Attorney General's Office from investigation improper use of public funds for up to seven years." Keep in mind that this commission was only supposed to last for four years. Omar Rivera, the head of the Association for a More Just Society, and Adriana Beltran, the director of citizen security and the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights organization, were both widely discouraged with the end of this commission. The former President Mel Zelaya, removed from office in 2009, stated "...as long as that dictatorship is governing the country, Honduras has no hope of moving forward" and encouraged citizens to protest in front of the commission's offices on January 27th, 2020. The general public already disliked President Hernandez because he was able to overcome a constitutional ban on re-election and was re-elected in 2017. Also, his bother Tony Hernandez was found guilty for cocaine trafficking in a US federal court. US prosecutors stated that the president was involved in the criminal act which he denied. 

According to the 2019 free state index, Honduras's freedom score is 60.2 which puts its economy at 93rd freest in the world. It is ranked below Montenegro and above Tanzania. Rule of law, government size, regulatory efficiency, and open markets are four categories (each with three subcategories) that are all ranked from zero to one hundred and then averaged. In the Americas region, Honduras is ranked 20th among the 32 countries in this region. Its score of 60.2 is above the Americas' regional average, but below the world's average score. As stated before, the country is riddled with Systemic corruption which contributes to the country's low score.

According to the 2019 fragile states index, Honduras is ranked 64th out of 178 countries with the score of 77.8. It moved up in rank by four points compared to year before (2018). Out of ten, the average of Honduras's economic, cohesion, political, and social indicator trends, which are also each divided into three categories, is 6.5. 



Here are some general facts about Honduras:

• It is Central America's second poorest country
• Has one of the world's highest homicide rates
• The top individual income and corporate tax rates are 25 percent
• The population of Honduras is predicted to be 9,235,340 in July of 2020 
• It's unemployment rate is 4.5%
• Became an independent nation in 1821
• The most common religion of the country is Roman Catholic.