TEGUCIGALPA – People living in Honduras are facing “war-like levels of violence”, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) has warned.
During a visit to the Central American country, the organization’s head Jan Egeland spoke to “people whose suffering was on the level with what you would find in any armed conflict”.
Entire communities were being forcibly displaced by gangs, he said.
He urged governments around the world not to neglect the crisis.
Egeland said the number of killings in Honduras – as well as in neighbouring Guatemala and El Salvador – was on par with that in armed conflicts, turning thousands of people into refugees.
Women in particular often become victims of sexual violence and femicides there, with an average of one woman murdered every 28 hours.
Children are not immune to gang violence either. Egeland told the BBC that he visited a school in the city of La Lima, which had seen student numbers drop from 5,000 to 1,200 over the past five years.
“There’s been a catastrophic drop out. Students either migrate north [to the US] or they are too afraid to even attend school, they stay home out of fear of being recruited by armed gangs,” Egeland said. (BBC)
