October 2026
Próspera v. Honduras: how sovereignty becomes a debt
- Claim: filed 19 Dec 2022 under CAFTA-DR's investment chapter, the Legal Stability Agreement and the ZEDE charter. It originally sought $10.775B, roughly two-thirds of Honduras's GDP. The Oct 2025 memorial asks first for restitution: reinstating the zone's rights over Honduran law, despite the Supreme Court ruling. The alternative is $1.63B plus $1M in moral damages.
- Procedure: the tribunal rejected bifurcation on 19 Mar 2026, so Honduras's jurisdictional objections (that the zone was improperly constituted) will be heard together with the merits. Honduras's counter-memorial came on 12 July 2026, and four amici, including two Indigenous-community advocates, filed on 7 Oct 2026. No award yet.
- Politics:
- The Biden-era ambassador Laura Dogu publicly criticized Honduras's moves as undermining investment protection after embassy officials met Próspera investors.
- In May 2023, 33 members of Congress led by Sen. Warren urged the State Department and USTR to back Honduras and drop investor–state arbitration (ISDS) from trade deals (Wired; House-record copy of an NYT piece, PDF) [V-s].
- Garifuna and English-speaking residents of Crawfish Rock oppose the zone, fearing it will expand onto ancestral land (Guardian 2022) [V-s].
- Mechanism: a ZEDE law passed under one government, plus a 50-year stability contract, plus a trade treaty with investor–state arbitration, together make democratic repeal costly. Undoing a privatized jurisdiction is treated as an expropriation payable in dollars. Asfura's return to ICSID and his party's authorship of the ZEDE law make a settlement or quiet revival plausible [speculation; watch].