AGUÁN VALLEY, Honduras — In the years after 2018, during periods when the threats subsided and the paramilitary gunmen didn’t show up, nights in the village of Panamá were peaceful. People meandered freely through the dirt roads of the community, wedged against an ocean of reclaimed, reoccupied African palm plantations on the remote northern coast of Honduras. They played soccer or lounged about mom-and-pop stores to drink beers. But when the sicarios, or gunmen, appeared on the streets, sauntering around with assault weapons and bulletproof vests, everything closed. They were the same gunmen accused of killing more than a dozen members of the land rights cooperative since 2018. Panamá is one of several villages in northern Honduras that have faced repeated waves of violence allegedly linked to the Dinant Holding Corporation, a Central American African palm oil and consumer goods company. In 2009, Dinant benefited from a $30 million dollar loan to develop its plantations from the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation, even though the company was linked to waves of violence against land defenders in the Bajo Aguán Valley region of Honduras. Yet on Oct. 3, a court in the U.S. state of Delaware ruled in a class action lawsuit against the IFC that the lender was liable for allowing its money to finance violent actors implicated in human rights abuses and killings. The court decided the bank needs to pay nearly $5 million in reparations to 13 anonymous plaintiffs from the Bajo Aguán Valley who filed for damages…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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