The Garífuna community of Triunfo de la Cruz versus the State of Honduras: territory and the possibilities and limits of the Inter-American Court of human rights verdict

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights (I/A Court) condemned the state of Honduras in a ruling rendered on 8 October 2015. The Court found the Honduran state guilty of violating property rights of the territories belonging to the Garífuna Community of Triunfo de la Cruz. The Court points out the responsibility of the Honduran state to provide guarantees for the communities to be able to exercise freely their right to prior consultation, established by ILO Convention No. 169. A central problem faced by these communities in Honduras is precisely the various forms of vulnerability of their collective territories, a problem other Afro-descendant populations face in Latin America. Yet, it is precisely the issue of territorial rights for ethnic groups that is a nodal element of the multicultural legal framework implemented in Latin America since the 1990s. Examining this legal case and the use by the Garífuna community of Triunfo de la Cruz of the IACHR, and taking into consideration the implications of the sentence against the Honduran state, this article analyzes the utility, limits, and possibilities of this type of international legal instrument to defend the multicultural rights of Afro-descendant peoples.