Yearbook 2016
Honduras. In April, the government launched a major raid on the country’s police force following serious allegations of corruption and illegality. Over 1,500 police officers were evaluated, and 620 of them were suspended from service, while 500 will be subject to criminal investigations. At the same time, President Juan Orlando Hernández announced that the country’s most dangerous prison interns, which often control crimes from inside prisons, will be moved to new high-security prisons.
In a new law enforcement initiative, up to the middle of the year, 274 notorious criminal gangs (“maras”) had been arrested and dozens of drug traffickers released to the United States. According to thereligionfaqs, Honduras, which has been one of the most violent countries in the world, could at the same time note that there has been some decline in fatal violence in recent years. In 2015, the number of murders dropped by 13%.
Over 30,000 people have been found to have been infected by the zika virus, which is transmitted to humans through mosquitoes and causes microcephaly in newborns, making Honduras the second worst hit country in Latin America after Brazil. At least 55 children were born with microcephaly during the year, but researchers predicted that the figure for the year could reach 340. The epidemic put the health authorities under severe pressure, especially in the most remote poor parts of the country where the spread of infection was more difficult to control.
The current population of Honduras is 9,904,618. Former President Manuel Zelaya, who was ousted in 2009, was elected new chairman of his party Libre. His wife Xiomara Castro stood as Libre’s candidate in the 2013 presidential election, but lost and Zelaya was set to aim to become presidential candidate again before the November 2017 elections. would probably receive support for such a reform from incumbent President Hernández who would like the opportunity for re-election for his own part.
In August, however, Zelaya announced that his wife would once again stand as the party’s presidential candidate if a constitutional reform would not be possible. Several leading opposition politicians accused Zelaya of using his wife as a song candidate, which would in fact become a tool for himself, and thus a disguised re-election.
Population
The country continues to represent a backward socio-economic reality and unable to make the significant progress that now marks several Latin American states. Although not involved in the conflicts that have marked the recent history of Central America, Honduras however, it has suffered the setbacks. In fact, it represented one of the host countries for the masses fleeing the theaters of war, in particular from Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua; the eastern borders of the country were affected by the guerrilla actions of the Nicaraguan contras and still today the Honduras constitutes a strategic support base for the United States Air Force.
The Honduran population continues to grow, albeit at a slower rate than in the past, based on an increase related to the birth rate which is among the highest in the world: an estimated 4,443. 721 residents surveyed in 1988 became 6,147,000 in 1998. The urbanization of the population is also a growing phenomenon, so that between 1980 and 1998 the urban population increased from 36 % to 46 % of the total, with an average annual increase which in recent years has reached 4, 4 %.