Honduras

After decades of instability and political violence, Honduras is still marked by high levels of violent crime and insecurity. Small arms and light weapons are easily accessible to the civilian population, through both legal and illegal means, with weapons mostly originating from neighbouring countries in Central America and from the United States. Despite various amnesty initiatives launched by the Honduran government in order to register privately owned weapons, the uncontrolled presence of these weapons throughout the territory still constitutes a major threat to security in the country and the region.

In terms of weapons and ammunition management, Honduras has implemented a national legal framework on the possession and use of weapons, but its weapons and ammunition management capacities are considered insufficient to prevent the proliferation of small arms and light weapons. The country’s weapons and ammunition national stockpiles are reportedly particularly vulnerable, and registration and disposal procedures lack transparency. At the same time, organisations such as the Program of Assistance for the Control of Arms and Munitions (PACAM) of the Organization of American States (OAS) and the HALO Trust are working with the Ministry of Defence, the National Police, and the Public Ministry to establish and oversee weapons and ammunition destruction and develop stockpile management capacities.

Source: Angela Escher and Marianne Widmer, “Weapons are everywhere in Honduras,” Arms Trade: Controversy and Opportunities, KOFF Newsletter No. 14, September 2016, https://reliefweb.int/report/world/koff-newsletter-no-147-september-2016-arms-trade-controversy-and-opportunities; "Honduras,” Halo Trust, https://www.halotrust.org/where-we-work/latin-america/honduras/; Steven Dudley, Firearms Trafficking in Honduras (Washington, DC: InsightCrime and Asociación para una Sociedad Más Justa, 2017), https://insightcrime.org/investigations/firearms-trafficking-in-honduras/; Matthias Nowak, Measuring Illicit Arms Flows: Honduras (Geneva: Small Arms Survey, 2016), https://www.smallarmssurvey.org/resource/measuring-illicit-arms-flows-honduras-research-note-62.