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MACCIH of the OAS will Travel to Honduras the Second Week of November

The Mission to Support the Fight Against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras (MACCIH) of the Organization of American States (OAS) will travel to the Central American country during the second week of November to continue to define the details of its work plan in a new round of exchanges with various social, economic, and political sectors, following the progress made this week.

In order to learn about the work Honduras is carrying out in the fight against corruption and impunity, the OAS General Secretariat held meetings with Honduran authorities between Wednesday and Friday this week at its headquarters in Washington DC. Among them were the Foreign Minister Arturo Corrales; the Minister of Security, Julian Pacheco; the Attorney General, Oscar Fernando Chinchilla; the Permanent Representative of Honduras to the OAS, Leonidas Rosa Bautista; the President of the National Banking and Insurance Commission, Ethel Deras Enamorado; the Chair of the High Court of Auditors, Daysi de Ancheta; the Magistrate of the Supreme Court of Justice Rosa de Lourdes Paz Haslam; the Deputy Commissioner Director of Planning in the Secretariat for Security, Gerson Velasquez; and the National Director of the Prosecutor’s Office, Rolando Edgardo Argueta Perez.

The objective of these meetings was to exchange information to provide feedback on the MACCIH proposal. International experts in fighting corruption and judicial reform with experience in the region and in other parts of the world also attended, such as Jan Michael Simon, of the Max Planck Institute; and Jacobo Dominguez, former Counsellor at the Electoral Institute of Veracruz and Professor at the Universidad Veracruzana. At the invitation of the Honduran Foreign Ministry, the Permanent Representative of Peru to the OAS, former Minister of Justice and former Prime Minister of the Republic of Peru, as well as the person responsible for the National Plan to Fight Corruption in the country, Juan Federico Jimenez Mayor, also took part.

The representatives of the OAS General Secretariat also met with civil society groups such as the Association for a More Just Society and the Association of Judges for Democracy, to learn about their impressions of the proposal presented by the OAS Secretary General, Luis Almagro, on September 28 to the President of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernandez.

From an integrated and independent perspective, the MACCIH proposes a systematic approach to the fight against corruption in five strategic axes: the supervision and accompaniment of international judges and prosecutors, the preparation of assessments that contribute to the improvement of the justice system, the application of international agreements on anti-corruption, the monitoring of the National System of Citizen Security and the monitoring of the progress of the justice system by civil society.

Reference: E-320/15