Committee on the Rights of the Child

Sixty- ninth session

25 May–12 June 2015

Item 4 of the provisional agenda

Consideration of reports of States parties

List of issues in relation to the initial report submitted by Honduras under article 8, paragraph 1, of the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict (CRC/C/OPAC/HND/1)

The State party is requested to submit additional, updated information in writing (15 pages maximum), if possible by 15 March 2015.

The Committee may take up any aspect of children’s rights set out in the Optional Protocol during the dialogue with the State party.

1.Please provide information on the mechanism responsible for coordinating the implementation of the Optional Protocol, the specific roles assigned to it and the way it coordinates its work with other bodies involved in implementing the Optional Protocol.

2.Please provide the Committee with information on the Northern Military Academy and the Nido de Águilas Educational Centre, in particular on the curricula of those educational institutions. Please indicate whether the students receive military training and firearms instruction. Please also provide information on the students’ right to leave those institutions at any time and on the disciplinary methods used in them. Please indicate whether the students attending those educational institutions have access to independent complaints mechanisms.

3.Please provide information on the age at which students enter the other educational academies of the Armed Forces of Honduras mentioned in paragraph 64 of the State party’s report. Please provide information on the content of military school curricula and the coverage of human rights and humanitarian law, in particular the instruction given concerning the Convention and its Optional Protocols.

4.Please provide information on programmes run by schools, local authorities or other agencies to keep children and adolescents from joining gangs. Please provide information on the Guardians of the Nation Programme, which is run by units of the Armed Forces.

5.Please provide detailed information on the activities carried out to disseminate the Optional Protocol and provide training concerning it, as well as on human rights training programmes for all groups of professionals, in particular the special crime-fighting forces (the military police and the Investigative Troops and Special Security Response Group (TIGRES)), law-enforcement officials, immigration personnel, judges, social workers, teachers, media professionals and lawmakers.

6.Please provide information on the legislative and administrative measures taken by the State party to prevent the recruitment of children and adolescents by armed gangs and to penalize such gangs for doing so.

7.Please provide information on the methods and procedures used by the State party to identify children and adolescents who are in vulnerable situations.

8.Please explain what legislative and administrative measures the State party has taken to prevent children and adolescents from gaining access to firearms, as well as the measures that have been adopted to recover the firearms that are currently being used by children and adolescents in the State party.

9.Please indicate whether Honduran law prohibits the sale and export of arms, including small arms and light weapons.

10.Please indicate whether efforts have begun to win the passage of an extradition law that would do away with the obstacles mentioned by the State party in paragraphs 102 and 103 of its report.