Honduras

Madam President of the General Assembly, Mr. Secretary-General of the United Nations, Excellencies, distinguished Heads of State and Government, Ambassadors, Authorities, Honorable Delegates, Ladies and Gentlemen,

I begin this message on behalf of the Government of the Republic of Honduras and in the voice of President Iris Xiomara Castro Sarmiento, the first woman to lead the destiny of our nation, who firmly recognizes the historic significance of this General Assembly commemorating 80 years of the existence of the United Nations.

Eight decades have passed since humanity, after the horror of two world wars, decided to build a new legal, moral, and political edifice to preserve peace, protect fundamental rights, and build equitable development among peoples.

Today, in 2025, we are called upon to urgently examine whether that founding promise is still being fulfilled or, worse still, whether it risks being emptied of meaning in the face of the unprecedented challenges of the twenty-first century.

Madam President,

The world is not at peace.

The genocide in Gaza, the devastation in Ukraine, persistent and violent crises especially in the Middle East, Africa, and Haiti, and the dangerous arms business of global capitalism are evidence of the multilateral system's failure to fulfill its essential mandate to achieve peace, prevent barbarity, and halt the advance of the nuclear arms race that the great powers herald as humanity's apocalypse.

We firmly denounce that the most consequential decisions on international peace and security remain hostage to the five permanent members of the Security Council. Their veto power, turned into an anachronistic privilege, has paralyzed collective action and calls for peace in different parts of the world, and has allowed those who commit war crimes to be covered with impunity.

The UN cannot continue to be a hostage of particular interests, nor an accomplice by omission in the destruction of entire peoples. It is morally unacceptable that, while billions are spent on weapons, funds for peace operations, humanitarian aid, and sustainable development are being cut.

How can it be justified that the voice of 193 States that have a presence in this General Assembly and seek peace, to put an end to the different blockages by the powers, is nullified by a single vote?

We cannot continue to sustain a global order built on privilege and inequality that causes the suffering of millions of poor people in the world. If we want the United Nations to survive as a guarantor of peace and not as a powerless spectator, it is imperative to reform its founding charter.

For this reason, Honduras joins the outcry of the Global South demanding a structural transformation of the Charter of the United Nations, democratizing the Security Council, to restore legitimacy, effectiveness, and justice to the summit of the world's nations.

We clearly propose:

• First, expanding the composition of permanent and non-permanent members, ensuring equitable regional representation.
• Second, eliminating the right of veto, especially when peace is being sought, a ceasefire is demanded, or action is prevented in the face of genocide, war crimes, or massive human rights violations.
• Third, strengthening the role of the General Assembly, giving it greater binding power over decisions on peace, security, and development.
• And finally, opening decision-making spaces to women, Indigenous peoples, youth, and diasporas, whose voices remain marginalized.

Honduras is not accepting any more excuses. We will not remain silent in the face of injustice. The norms of the international order cannot continue to be defined by the logic of war, the hegemony of capital, or the strategic convenience of the most powerful. They must reflect the universal longing of peoples to live in peace, in democracy, with dignity and freedom.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

From Honduras, we have embraced these principles with conviction. In these three and a half years of democratic government, led by President Xiomara Castro Sarmiento, we have moved forward firmly in giving dignity to our nation, through institutional reconstruction, the recovery of our independence, our popular sovereignty, and the defense of civil, political, environmental, and human rights.

After 12 years and 7 months since the coup d'état against the democratic president Manuel Zelaya, a narco-dictatorship was installed in Honduras whose leader, Juan Orlando Hernández, was sentenced in New York to 45 years in prison for forming a drug-trafficking cartel to traffic drugs into the United States. Public-private corruption, violence, and institutional decay were the instruments the Honduran oligarchy used to continue exploiting our natural resources and our people. Our government has begun a process of refounding the homeland, and a profound transformation, aimed at the well-being of the majorities sacrificed by the narco-dictatorship and historically excluded by the neoliberal economic model.

Refounding the State has meant putting life above business, and education and health above privilege.

The progress is clear:

• Poverty fell from 73% in 2021 to 63% in 2024, and extreme poverty fell from 54% to 40%. That means more than a million Hondurans have stopped being poor in these three years.
• Inequality also fell by almost six points on the Gini index, progress that doubles that of the narco-dictatorship governments. Meanwhile, the incomes of the poorest 20%, which had been sacrificed by the plunder and reckless debt increase of 600% after the coup, [have improved].
• Under this administration of Xiomara Castro's democratic socialism, their incomes improved by 150%, gaining access to free healthcare, sports, security, education, roads, agriculture, and energy for the poor.
• In security, Honduras ended 2024 with a rate of 26 homicides per hundred thousand inhabitants, the lowest in twenty years.
• In the fight against corruption, we opened public finances to social auditing, eliminated corrupt trusts, and recovered public assets.
• The Tax Justice Law sent to the National Congress drives forward progressive fiscal reform, seeking to redistribute wealth in favor of education, health, agriculture, and social protection, and eliminates the privileges of the 25 economic groups and 10 families that monopolize 80% of the gross domestic product and tax exemptions.
• On gender matters, equality in decision-making was expanded by forming a cabinet with equal representation of men and women, as well as programs to eradicate gender-based violence.

Distinguished delegates:

Honduras is making a great effort to restore its forests through the zero deforestation by 2030 program, for which we have created three military forest protection battalions. Honduras is one of the countries hardest hit by climate change, despite being among those that pollute the planet the least. Droughts, devastating storms, biodiversity loss, and forced displacement are open wounds that we did not cause, but that we pay for with lives and with our future. This is not a struggle we can face alone.

Likewise, we reject the criminalizing view of migration: harsher laws and more militarized borders. That path solves nothing; it only perpetuates tragedy, multiplies suffering, and denies international shared responsibility for a human and global phenomenon. People migrate because of unequal systems that have failed them for years, not by choice. Criminalizing them means condemning them twice: first to poverty, and then to exile.

Colleagues:

Our foreign policy is grounded in unrestricted respect for sovereignty, self-determination of peoples, and human rights. For this reason:

• We denounce the unilateral and illegal sanctions that strangle economies and condemn peoples to poverty. These measures, such as those imposed for decades against Cuba, must end immediately.
• We condemn without reservation and identify as unacceptable all forms of foreign occupation and threats of military interference in our Hemisphere. Actions like these amount to the denial of peoples' right to constitute themselves as free and sovereign States. That right is inalienable, and its recognition can no longer be postponed or manipulated. No rhetorical justification can legitimize the violation of sovereignty or the subjugation of nations.
• That is why today, before this General Assembly, we reaffirm our recognition of the State of Palestine, consistent with our historic commitment and with our unwavering position in favor of peace, security, and the coexistence of two States in the Middle East.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen delegates:

This November, Honduras will hold general elections within the framework of a transparent, inclusive, and democratic process. The Government of President Xiomara Castro guarantees the free participation of all political sectors, respect for public freedoms, and the accompaniment of international and regional electoral observation missions.

Madam President,

The United Nations must dare to change so as not to be an echo of the past, but the voice of the future. Eighty years after its creation, it is not enough to commemorate the road traveled: it is time to open spaces for dialogue and hope, for a better tomorrow that is still possible.

Thank you very much.