The Dam on the Gualcarque River

From 2014 until 2017, the Dutch entrepreneurial development bank (Financierings-maatschappij voor Ontwikkelingslanden N.V., ‘FMO’) was involved in financing the Agua Zarca hydroelectric project on the Gualcarque river in the region of Rio Blanco, Honduras (see Independent Fact Finding Mission Report and Recommendations, Annex 4, para. A.1., ‘Independent Mission’). The river and the surrounding land are sacred to the indigenous Lenca people, and the project has been met by their continued protests. The local community maintains that they were not properly consulted by the State or the owner and developer of the project, the Honduran company Desarrollos Energéticos S.A. (‘DESA’). The situation in Rio Blanco gained increased international attention after Honduran activist Berta Cáceres, co-founder of the NGO COPINH, was murdered in her home on the night of 2-3 March 2016. Less than two weeks after this, and only eight days after the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights issued precautionary measures for all members of the NGO, fellow COPINH member Nelson García was killed on 15 March 2016. This ultimately led the main financial institutions, including FMO, to withdraw from the project. In November 2018, seven men were convicted of murdering Cáceres, ordered by DESA executives. The executive president of the company has been charged as the ‘intellectual author’.