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Honduras Honduras: Child Soldiers Global Report 2001 From the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers Article 276 of the 1982 Constitution was amended by Decree No.24-94, ratified by Congress in 1995, establishing voluntary military service from the age of 18 during peacetime and calling for the 1985 Military Service Act and corresponding regulations to be redrafted. In its periodic report to the Committee on the Rights of the Child, the Government asserted that "military service is now voluntary and educational" and that "there is no compulsory conscription." The government also reported that "for incorporation into the armed forces the minimum age is 18 years." However, the 1985 Military Service Act has not yet been redrafted, nor has new legislation been passed since 1994. Although forced recruitment was the norm in the 1980s and early 1990s, there have been no reported cases since 1994. There is no evidence of underage recruitment. June 12, 2001 Honduras: Landmine Monitor Report 2000 Honduras signed the Mine Ban Treaty on 3 December 1997 and ratified on 24 September 1998. Honduras has not yet passed domestic implementation legislation. Honduras submitted its first Article 7 report on 30 August 1999 in Spanish, covering the period from 1998 to 1999. Honduras voted in favor of UN General Assembly Resolution 54/54B in support of the Mine Ban Treaty in December 1999, as it had on similar resolutions in 1997 and 1998. It has also supported the pro-ban resolutions of the Organization of American States (OAS). It was one of nine countries that signed the "Declaration of San José" in Costa Rica on 5 April 2000, which includes an article promoting the Mine Ban Treaty. August 1, 2000 The Facts Speak for Themselves: The Preliminary Report on Disappearances of the National Commissioner for the Protection of Human Rights in Honduras Battalion 3-16, a clandestine military death squad originally trained and equipped by the CIA, is synonymous with torture, murder and disappearance in Honduras. The nightmare began in August 1980, when twenty-five Honduran army officers were flown to a desert air strip in the southwestern U.S. to spend six months learning interrogation techniques. After this and subsequent training sessions in Honduras, a repressive pattern emerged: once suspected guerrillas targeted for surveillance were captured by disguised Battalion 3-16 agents using unmarked vehicles, they were interrogated and tortured in hidden jails, summarily executed, and their bodies dumped in unmarked graves. The Honduran and U.S. governments routinely denied that death squads existed in Honduras. In this pathbreaking report translated into English by HRW/Americas and the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL), the Honduran government for the first time accepts responsibility for a systematic pattern of disappearances, many of them carried out by Battalion 3-16. This report is a major accomplishment in the hemisphere-wide struggle to establish truth and justice for serious human rights violations. In publishing it in English, HRW and CEJIL seek to spur a truth-telling process in the U.S. that would complement and reinforce that underway in Honduras. The human rights organizations invite the U.S. government to release all relevant documents concerning disappearances in the 1980s and to implement steps to ensure that U.S. aid — whether covert or overt — is never again used for torture, summary executions, or other criminal acts. July 1, 1994
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