LatinNews Daily Report - 10 March 2014

POLITICS | Thousands of NGOs lose legal status. On 7 March Interior Minister Rigoberto Chang cancelled the legal status of the local NGO Comité por la Libre Expresión (C-Libre), which monitors the freedom of expression in Honduras. The move followed the publication in the daily gazette of a decree rescinding the legal status of 5,429 NGOs. The decree was issued by the Unidad de Registro y Seguimiento de Asociaciones Civiles (Ursac), which sits under the interior ministry. Interior Minister Chang told reporters that of an estimated 18,000 NGOs operating in the country, upwards of 5,000 would have their status revoked. On 19 January the former interior minister, Áfrico Madrid (2012-2014), was quoted by the daily El Heraldo as saying that following an two-year evaluative process in 2010-2012, some 4,800 NGOs had their status removed in December 2013. Some NGOs complain that the government is moving against NGOs that are critical of it; the government says that many NGOs operate with zero transparency and routinely fail to meet legal criteria requiring them to submit annual financial accounts etc. Madrid said of 12,000 NGOs vetted by the interior ministry, some 7,200 were “properly registered” as of December 2013. Chang did not say how he had arrived at his higher estimate of 18,000 “private development organisations” in the country, which is quite high for a population of 7.9m.

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