Defend Democracy in Honduras: Join the 2025 Election Observation Mission

The sweeping attack on democratic institutions that we are experiencing in the United States since Donald Trump returned to power is not confined to our borders.

Hondurans – who go to the polls on November 30 to choose a new President, Congress, and municipal authorities – are acutely aware that the authoritarian winds blowing from Washington are stirring their political climate – and not for the better.

Global Exchange’s Honduran partner, The Center for the Study of Democracy (CESPAD), was born in the enduring spirit of democratic struggle forged in a country that spent most of the 20th century under a series of US-supported oligarchic dictatorships. CESPAD itself was founded to oppose the shocking 2009 military coup that was shamefully whitewashed by the Obama White House. 

Four years ago, CESPAD invited Global Exchange to help organize the international aspect of their civic observation of a critical “return to democracy” election in which President Juan Orlando Hernández (the last in a series of “golpista” presidents) saw his party resoundingly defeated. Soon afterward, Orlando Hernandez was charged with narco-trafficking and extradited to the United States.

This year Global Exchange is again organizing observations with CESPAD in alliance with the Honduras Solidarity Network (HSN) and several partners in Central America, Mexico, and Colombia, many of whom gathered with us at the pro-democracy strategy meeting recently co-convened with our partners in Guatemala.    

We have a multi-national team on the ground doing a pre-election assessment that will help us analyze and design our observation and communications strategies during the election itself. In the four years since the last elections, Honduras has grappled with instability. 

Now, conservative factions inside Honduras are echoing the rhetoric of key members of the U.S. Congress, particularly within the House Foreign Affairs Committee, by raising concerns about external influence – especially from China, a country with which the government of President Xiomara Castro has developed close political and economic ties.  

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio says the U.S. will not interfere, but given the fraught history of American overreach, Honduran social movements and international allies are on edge.

As always, Global Exchange will maintain strict non-partisan neutrality but as strong advocates for a fair and peaceful process and democratic free choice.