Since 2014 we have brought relevant issues before the General Assembly, including the severe impact of climate change on our countries, low international coffee prices, the role of organized crime and criminal groups as destabilizers of democratic Governments and the injustice that we have seen in the distribution of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccines. All of our demands are justified.
The entire world is currently facing a pandemic that has brought us to our knees. The COVID-19 Vaccine Global Access Facility had serious problems at the outset in meeting the delivery of vaccines to Member States at a critical time when lives were at stake. That highlighted the importance of ensuring that the World Health Organization does not wait for problems to arise before coming up with solutions. It cannot be unprepared to deal with that or any other emergency. Today, before the Assembly, I propose transforming the international health system, especially the World Health Organization, in view of the inequity reflected in the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines to developing
countries that were unable to access them despite having the money available. An emergency fund must be created with contributions from donors but also from the countries themselves to ensure equitable and timely access to vaccines and every other form of treatment.
There can be no doubt that the year 2020 was a disastrous one for Honduras. In addition to the pandemic, we were hit by Eta and Iota, two highly destructive hurricanes. They destroyed our crops and our productive and road infrastructure were severely affected. Thousands of houses were damaged and sadly, dozens of Hondurans lost their lives. Various studies by the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the Central Bank of Honduras estimate that the losses amount to more than $4 billion. That may be an insignificant amount for a rich country, but for us it is a great deal, the equivalent of 30 per cent of our annual national budget. More than 445,000 Hondurans were also put out of work.
Despite being one of the countries most affected by droughts and destructive rains in the world, we are among the nations that contribute most to the conservation of the environment. While 50 per cent of our territory is forest and 30 per cent falls into the category of protected nature reserves, we are severely affected by climate change. In Honduras, we have developed a plan for a protective system against climate change consisting of multipurpose dams that collect water during heavy rains. The water is then used for human consumption and to promote intelligent agriculture with cutting-edge technology for irrigation and food production. We are complementing that by changing the ways in which we approach agriculture, using less land area with higher productivity, and by caring for our forests. However, we are not seeing green climate funds being provided as they should. That can be achieved only with real political will. Action is long overdue and we cannot understand why it is still not happening. At the recent summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States in Mexico, I proposed the creation of a climate change forecasting centre. I will also take that idea to Glasgow. We demand that industrialized countries genuinely fulfil their commitments through green financing and an end to bureaucracy, and that we address mitigation, adaptation and emergency situations in the countries such as ours that are worst affected every year.
In 2014, when we took office, Honduras was the most violent country in the world and the least equal in the region. Few micro-, small and medium-sized enterprises had access to credit, and our infrastructure had been neglected for more than half a century. Most of the population had no housing and no hope of obtaining it. The economy was generally disorganized and unstable. Now, a few months before my term of office ends, I am very pleased to say that Honduras today looks very different. Despite the serious and catastrophic crises we have had to face, today we have some of the best macroeconomic numbers in the region thanks to our good management of the country’s finances. Institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the most prestigious credit rating agencies in the world have endorsed our transparency and management of funds. Honduras can now easily access new money under better conditions with very low interest rates, which directly benefits the population in general through social programmes, among other things.
We are also continuing to build more infrastructure than any previous Honduran Government. We are working on achieving our 200-year-old dream of linking the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, as well as improving infrastructure in every productive region of the country. We have modernized and improved our ports and airports, including the Palmerola and Ramon Villeda Morales airports, which serve major cities. Today we are seeing significant growth in the manufacturing industry to the tune of 70 per cent. We are entering a new era in manufacturing, with modern plants producing new synthetic textiles. We have saved the State millions of Honduran lempiras with the construction of the most modern Government civic centre in the region, which will ensure that the population is served in a more efficient, closer and more comprehensive way, now and for generations to come.
We have worked hard to achieve all of this in a spirit of transparency throughout our eight years in office. We have invested and managed the resources of the Honduran people diligently and transparently in those eight years, working hand in hand with international transparency in at least four areas of Government. Together with the Organization of American States (OAS), we established the first mission to support the fight against corruption and impunity in the history of the OAS. We continue to work on transparency and the fight against corruption and crime alongside the United Nations. We have also established a transparency
secretariat to watch over the interests of the people. We are building and strengthening institutions in the service of the Honduran people and in support of prevention and civil protection, in order to care for and save lives.
Mr. Salovaara (Finland), Vice-President, took
the Chair.
One of the sectors that has given our economy the greatest boost has been tourism, which has generated more than 274,000 jobs thanks to the fact that our country still has enormous potential to be exploited in that area. We are counting on international tourism and now receive some of the largest cruise ships in the world.
For the first time in history, Hondurans who are most in need or have been neglected for many years are receiving care with dignity through the largest social programme in our history, Vida Mejor, which has assisted more than 5.7 million people with more than 41 million social benefits, ranging from home improvement to the complete construction of a house, in addition to supporting them with seed capital, soft loans and training to enable them to launch their own businesses, be their own bosses and generate jobs. Vida Mejor means dignity and social justice for the forgotten of Honduras, and its impact is tangible. According to ECLAC data, we managed to reduce poverty levels in the country by 7 per cent before the pandemic. Thanks to this social programme, we have been able to cushion the impact of the hurricanes and the pandemic and accelerate the recovery process. Entrepreneurs and micro-, small and medium-sized enterprises are part of the social economy and generate more than 70 per cent of jobs in the country. They can now receive loans at very low interest rates that help to boost their businesses significantly.
Rural producers have also received historic levels of support, with the spectacular transformation of the agricultural food industry, including bonuses, technical training and a credit system at 5 per cent per annum with the best terms and rates on the market, unprecedented in our country’s history. We have built more than 46,000 houses, more than all the Honduran Administrations of recent years combined. Today we are continuing that transformation with greater security, more and improved infrastructure, better assistance for entrepreneurs and more support in terms of food production and improved housing and social programmes for those who had been forgotten. We are delivering a better Honduras.
There is a new issue that I feel obliged to raise in this Hall, as it affects many of those Governments like Honduras that are working in the international fight against drug trafficking. To understand it, it is important to remember that a decade ago, Honduras had the highest homicide rate in the world. It was also the country through which most of the drugs entering the United States passed. That was the situation in 2010 when I assumed the presidency of the Honduras National Congress. In our determination to combat that scourge, we passed a series of security laws that were feared by drug traffickers. Those measures make it clear who is who in that fight, because such actions — for example the extradition of Hondurans for the first time in a century — could have been taken only by declared enemies of drug trafficking and organized crime. No one linked to drug trafficking or intimidated by criminals would ever take such measures.
The transformation that Honduras has undergone is extraordinary and has been recognized by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and friendly Governments around the world. Since I became president, according to official United States Government data reported by the Department of State and the Southern Command, Honduras has reduced drug trafficking through its territory by a historic 95 per cent — an almost unprecedented achievement. The statistics, which span 2010 to 2019, are impressive. Under my Administration, through extradition, surrender or capture, 44 drug traffickers are now in the custody of the United States, thereby dismantling the most powerful drug cartels in the country.
Honduras has also transformed its national police, which had been penetrated by criminals. Almost half of its members were dismissed. With a commission made up of civil-society members and given full independence to make decisions, we have built a new police force that is now trusted and viewed as an example for the region. Most importantly, thanks to our decisions, the homicide rate in the country has been reduced by almost 60 per cent, saving thousands of lives each year.
Until recently, explanations of how we achieved great results by working together would have come only from Honduran officials and our allies, including United States agencies such as the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the Southern Command,
the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and countries such as Colombia, Chile, Israel, Mexico, the other nations of Central America and, of course, the United Nations and the Inter-American Development Bank. But now there is a new element in the form of several revelatory documents that available to all and of interest to authorities and historians alike. They complete the picture by providing the real story from the side of the criminals. I have the public transcripts of secret recordings of Honduran drug traffickers made by the DEA. In 2013, a DEA agent infiltrated the secret meetings of several drug traffickers in Honduras. The transcripts are worth reading. They are United States Government documents, produced by official DEA sources and presented as evidence by federal prosecutors in court proceedings.
No doubt Netflix producers, particularly the writers of the show Narcos, are studying those recordings, because they offer a real and rare window into the thoughts and conversations of drug traffickers and assassins when they meet privately to conspire. As they talked to each other, they described their own reality. In the recordings, the drug traffickers complained that despite their best efforts, they had been unable to arrange any kind of deal with me and that I was not someone they could work or negotiate with. On the contrary, they knew that I would be ruthless when it came to organized crime. They even discussed how to try to kill me. In a recording made on 3 December 2013, after the elections, when they knew that I would be the next President, they said bluntly, “Now he will take us down.” They used a shorter and more vulgar phrase, but the gist was that it was all over, and they were right. Although the United States did not inform my Government about those meetings among drug traffickers, after I took office as President the subjects in the recordings ended up in jail in the United States for crimes related to drug trafficking.
Later, in September 2014, the FBI and the United States Embassy in Tegucigalpa informed my Government and me personally about the Mexican hitmen and their Honduran sponsors’ imminent plans to kill me in Gracias, in Lempira. I have with me the note sent to our Ambassador in Washington. We managed to prevent that crime. The criminals were captured and brought to justice in Honduras. What the audio recording proves is that they had had no dealings with me and no protection or hope from me, and with less than three weeks left before the elections in 2013, and based on the legislation and policies that I had been promoting since 2010 and the fact that their attempts to approach me never yielded results, they were worried. That was why the drug traffickers were talking about how Mexican hitmen would kill me and that at least 100 people would die in the assassination attempt. Essentially, the criminals in the recordings were saying that Juan Orlando Hernandez Alvarado was not a man they could work with and that they could not buy, manipulate or intimidate him. They said repeatedly that it was not possible for criminals to get close to him because he remained arisco, bien arisco, super arisco — aloof, distant, standoffish — to such people. I want to explain that because the word arisco was not translated correctly in the official transcription. The criminals understood that they were facing a serious problem.
The messages in the recordings are shocking. However, it is unlikely that even people like those here, who follow the news, have seen much information about the release of the DEA’s secret recordings, despite those and other revelations discrediting the false, worthless claims of the drug traffickers. When the media eventually reports on the transcripts, I imagine the headlines will say something along the lines of “DEA’s secret recordings uncover and demolish Honduran drug traffickers’ systematic false testimony”. It has now been proved that the drug traffickers lied under oath and therefore committed perjury. They gave false testimonies in United Nations courts and legal proceedings in the hope of benefiting, striking deals with prosecutors and even getting revenge. One key and extremely important element is that they have violated a fundamental condition for benefiting in any way from the United States justice system. Moreover, the drug traffickers’ genuine and visible behaviour speaks for itself and refutes their own false testimonies. When the drug traffickers pursued by Honduran institutions gave their initial statements in United States custody, they never mentioned having any dealings with me or receiving protection of any kind, let alone that I had accepted their money.
It is clearly all the more strange that several years later, and only after various other trials in which they testified differently, the traffickers changed their versions of the story to falsely claim the opposite. When the Los Cachiros cartel and a dozen other traffickers decided that with me as President they had no hope of carrying on their activities in Honduras and no chance
of making a deal, and that their best option was to abandon their criminal empires and submit to life in a foreign prison and place the only hope they had left in seeking a settlement with the United States, their behaviour spoke louder than any of the lies they are now telling in court.
The reason why the issue is relevant for so many Member States, and why the international media will eventually start reporting on it, is because it is vital and must be addressed. It is much bigger than Honduras or any other country. The question is whether the drug traffickers will be rewarded for their false testimony, which is what they think and expect will happen and apparently what they have been led to believe. In short, the crux of the issue is that if killers like Los Cachiros — major drug traffickers, who have confessed to at least 78 murders, including homicides and other crimes committed while they were cooperating with the DEA — are rewarded for giving false testimony, the system of international cooperation will be unsustainable, as it will introduce systematic corruption into the judicial process, which would translate into a betrayal of our allies who are risking their lives in this fight.
If the United States rewards perjury and criminals are allowed to give false testimony in United States federal court with impunity, that puts dangerous weapons in the hands of a deadly enemy — self- confessed hitmen—to be used against the most effective members of the alliance against transnational crime. If the authorities of the countries allied with the United States realize that hitmen and drug traffickers can be rewarded by the United States Government for committing perjury, there will be a real danger that trust will be lost and lead to a collapse in cooperation in countries all over the world. That would harm the interests of every country, like Honduras, that is committed to combating drug trafficking, and would dishonour the memory of the brave heroes who have sacrificed their lives in this fight, the thousands of innocent people who have lost their lives and all the Governments and institutions that have put their faith in a crucial international alliance.
Let me stress, however, that I am confident that in the end, the United States will not reward Los Cachiros and the other drug traffickers for their false testimony. We have seen, for example, that after drug traffickers testified falsely in a federal trial in New York that the Honduran military was helping them, the Commander of the United States Southern Command got in a plane, flew to Honduras and personally presented the top military commander of the Honduran armed forces with a high military decoration at a public ceremony. It was seen as a powerful demonstration that lies should not be rewarded. Similarly, following other false testimony in New York, the top leadership of the DEA invited me and my counter-narcotics team to meet with them in Washington, D.C., where the DEA issued a strong public statement that the President and the Government of Honduras are reliable and effective partners in the fight against drug trafficking. When we began our fight, we had a trustworthy and effective partnership with the Obama-Biden Administration and with its successor. While we were working with then- Vice-President Biden, his resolve and commitment were evident, as was the alliance between North and Central America.
Today let me say that as always, my Government will continue its effective international cooperation until my last day as President in 2022. We are leaving future generations a more secure and hopeful Honduras. I will bid farewell to the Assembly in the optimistic belief that the achievements that have transformed my country will provide more and better opportunities for our people. I am certain that subsequent Governments will be able to do the same or better, which will benefit our generation, our children and their children. I warmly embrace everyone on behalf of the Honduran people.