Democratic reform, rule of law, and anti-corruption efforts in Honduras have been severely hampered by complicity between government officials and narcotics trafficking organizations and systemic corruption at the highest level of society and government. The Honduran Supreme Court has also played a role in Honduras’ corruption landscape. A notable example of this includes allowing Former President Juan Orlando Hernández to run for re-election in 2017 despite an explicit constitutional prohibition. Together, the American Bar Association Rule of Law Initiative and the ABA Center for Human Rights implemented a rapid response program to provide technical assistance to the Honduran government, Attorney General (AG), and Supreme Court Nominating Board; and develop a public assessment, as well as non-public recommendations, of the process of selecting new Supreme Court justices. The ABA has extensive experience conducting assessments of high court selection processes and the selection of Attorneys General in the region. The ABA observed the 2015-2016 selection process in Honduras for the current slate of Supreme Court magistrates and proposed recommendations to strengthen the transparency and independence of the selection process. The overall goal of the one-year rapid response program from 2022-2023 was to support transparency and consistency with international standards in this process. In early 2023, the Honduran Congress selected the 15 justices that will make up the country’s new Supreme Court. Eight women and seven men were chosen to represent the country’s highest court and defend the interests of the Honduran people.
The program planned to build further its prior experience observing Attorney General selection processes and high court selection processes, as well as the ABA’s experience with selection processes for justices in the United States. This allowed the ABA to offer the Proposing Board technical assistance based on international procedures and best practices. Based on these prior experiences and the recommendations from the ABA’s monitoring of the 2015-2016 selection process in Honduras, the ABA has some tools and guidelines it offered to the Proposing Board during the Attorney General selection process, as it did to the Nominating Board during the Supreme Court selection process. The ABA is also open to considering any requests for specific technical support from the Board and hopes to support the Proposing Board’s work in ensuring a fair, transparent, and equitable selection process for the new Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General.
Our goal was to provide vetting procedures and proper background investigations for Supreme Court nominees and Attorney General candidates, provide technical assistance in the form of selection guidelines based on international standards and best practices, and provide a profile for Supreme Court nominees based on such standards.
In 2023, ABA ROLI interviewed two members of the Nominating Board for the New Supreme Court in Honduras to learn about their experience, Magistrate Julissa Aguilar of the Court of Criminal Appeals and General Counsel Gustavo Solórzano of the Honduran Council of Private Enterprise (Spanish, Consejo Hondureño de la Empresa Privada - COHEP).
In 2023, ABA ROLI provided guidance to the collegiate body responsible for the selection of the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General of Honduras (see here the President of the Supreme Court launching the election of the Attorney General, and after minute 6:29 she thanked the ABA for their support in the selection process). The Proponent Board, including Regulations of the Proponent Board for the Nomination of Candidates for the Attorney General of the Republic and Deputy Attorney General’s Office, approved the technical documents ABA ROLI proposed to assist in the selection process. For more coverage about the selection process of the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General, see here, here, here, here, and here.