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🇵🇾 Paraguay /Crime & Justice

Honduran groups urge approval of law to strengthen searches for missing people

From ABC Color · () Spanish

Translated from Spanish and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

Newswire Named sources Ongoing story
  • Honduras’ human rights commissioner and the International Committee of the Red Cross urged the government to approve a law strengthening searches for missing people.
  • The proposed law would create an official case registry, unify search and criminal-investigation procedures, and provide comprehensive support to families.
  • The campaign highlighted ongoing disappearances, including people lost along migration routes and the case of university student Angie Peña.

Honduran rights officials and the International Committee of the Red Cross are pressing Congress to approve a law that would give families of missing people a clearer path to searches, investigations and support.

The call came as Honduras’ National Human Rights Commission launched the campaign “Absence Has a Name: A Call to Memory, Justice and Action,” with support from the Red Cross, the Security Secretariat and the Public Prosecutor’s Office. Commissioner Blanca Izaguirre said lawmakers urgently needed to approve the Law on the Search for and Legal Protection of Missing Persons and Their Relatives, submitted in August.

The law already establishes the route to follow.

· Blanca IzaguirreThe Honduran human rights commissioner explained why Congress should approve the proposed legislation.

Izaguirre said the bill establishes the procedure authorities should follow and includes changes to the Penal Code related to enforced disappearance. She expressed confidence that Congress would approve the measure in the coming days so Honduras could address disappearances comprehensively and accompany affected families.

Disappearances, she stressed, are not only a legacy of events from decades ago. They continue today, including along migration routes and in cases involving people who leave home and never return. She cited the disappearance of university student Angie Peña, who was last seen in 2022 on the Caribbean island of Roatán.

We have people who disappear on migration routes, people who left home and never returned.

· Blanca IzaguirreIzaguirre emphasized that disappearances remain a current problem in Honduras.

Honduras already has some search protocols, but Izaguirre said the country needs a consolidated legal framework with unified mechanisms. The campaign seeks to give victims names and identities beyond official statistics and to draw attention to the prolonged anguish endured by relatives. One case it highlights is that of Wendy Manueles, who disappeared in June 2013 at age 22 while traveling toward the United States. Her father, Iván Manueles, attended the launch and said he still hoped to meet his daughter again.

Gia López, who leads the Red Cross program on missing people, said Honduras had made progress with search protocols but still lacked a unified registry of missing persons.

You see those testimonies, you hear those testimonies, and it is heartbreaking and cruel, (...) it is inhuman.

· Blanca IzaguirreShe described the prolonged distress experienced by families searching for missing relatives.
About this summary

Originally published by ABC Color in Spanish. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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