Violence in Honduras is so notorious that it is considered to be one of the most dangerous places in the world. So how is the level of peace improving?
Honduras had the fifth largest improvement in peacefulness on the 2020 Global Peace Index (GPI), rising four places in the rankings to 119, with a 3.1 per cent increase in its overall score.
It recorded improvements across all three GPI domains, and had particularly noticeable improvements on the political terror scale and deaths from internal conflict indicators.
Honduras has suffered from some of the highest rates of internal conflict and interpersonal violence in the world over the past decade. However, the level of conflict has steadily declined over the past five years.
As the activities of criminal gangs in Honduras have begun to subside, the homicide rate has fallen steadily, and deaths from internal conflict fell to zero.
The political terror scale indicator improved, suggesting that government repression related to internal conflict has now lessened, and there was also a fall in the number of terrorist attacks and deaths from terrorism.
However, both the police rate and incarceration rate have risen over the past few years.
Despite these improvements, there are still many sources of potential conflict and tension within Honduras. It has the fourth highest homicide rate in the world, despite a 26% fall in the number of homicides in 2017.
The political tensions surrounding internal conflict and migration flows threaten to sour relations with the US, and it still has very high levels of violent crime, with concordantly high perceptions of criminality.
What can peacebuilders learn from a country of under a million people that has risen 43 places on the Global Peace Index in just over a decade?
