Social Work Ethics: Without Water and Land, There Is No Life!

By Sharon White, D. Min, MA, LCSW, LMFT

Social workers have a unique role to help change the public narrative from “blaming the victims” (immigrants) to acknowledging how U.S. policies toward other countries have helped create the very conditions of spiraling poverty and violence from which people are fleeing for their lives.

In December 2022, I engaged a two-week delegation to El Salvador and Honduras, sponsored by the SHARE Foundation and the Leadership Conference for Women Religious (LCWR). I often find myself encouraging political representatives, leaders of religious institutions, social workers, coworkers, and support networks to be advocates for human rights. As a social worker, I am engrained with the ethics of advocating for a just world. I recognize this can only be realized if I am willing to do my part to present the information that I personally witnessed.

Many people in Latin America are struggling with issues that are familiar to people in the United States and throughout the world: the right to preserve human rights, water, and land. While our delegation had a broad scope of experiences as we accompanied many individuals and groups, I continue to be haunted by the devastation I witnessed in the Bajo Aguan region in Honduras. We met with many people living in fear of losing all, as they nonviolently try to defend their water, land, and lives. If the U.S. government wishes to limit the crisis at our border by helping the people to remain in their homeland, we need to take a serious look at how explicit and complicit we are in causing the immigration crisis. Building walls physically or through bills like H.R. 2 is certainly going to complicate an already broken system. H.R. 2 bans asylum as we know it by increasing restrictions on non-governmental organizations’ efforts to support people seeking safety in the U.S., eliminating federal funds for legal representation, and more.

Part of our delegation rode in two pickup trucks over four tributaries of the San Pedro and Guapinol Rivers. Then we climbed to the top of the mountain where there is a beautifully clean waterfall. It should provide enough water for drinking and agriculture. However, mining companies are preventing the flow of pure water and contaminating it. We listened to the courageous efforts of environmental defenders, members of communities who live along the polluted rivers who resist migrating.

Unjustly jailed for two years, the water defenders continue to try to halt Lenir Pérez’s Inversiones Los Pinares Mining Company from creating an iron oxide mine in the Carlos Escaleras National Park. The mine is an environmental disaster, contaminating the rivers that provide their water, which also drain into the Caribbean Sea. Of course, desperate people who cannot maintain healthy living conditions are certainly going to seek alternative places to live.

We repeatedly heard from people whose lives were threatened. Since we returned to the U.S. in midDecember, we received reports about the murders of nine environmental and land defenders in the Bajo Aguan region. We spent time with their communities and families. One was only 15 years old. Two defenders were murdered simply traveling to their homes after a meeting. Blatant propaganda stated the two men were robbed and killed. Yet their cell phones, wallets, and money were left with the bodies. Murderers broke into a home and killed one defender and his father-in-law. Mauricio Esquivel, a member of the Tranvio Farm Cooperative and father of nine, was murdered. His life was dedicated to saving the land in the Aguán Valley, Honduras, so the community could farm their land.

The Dinant Corporation continues to violate human rights by displacing families and communities from their land, so that the corporation can profit from palm oil. While trying to negotiate land titles legally acquired in the 1970s, the peasants live with constant intimidation, evictions, and loss of life. More than 150 laborers have been massacred since 2009. The mining companies’ security guards, the military, the police, and public officials have been actively involved in grave human rights violations. Harassment, evictions, and assassinations are common in the communities we visited.

U.S. military aid to Honduras is not the answer. It is a known fact that the U.S. has been training, funding, and arming the Honduran military and police for decades and the human rights situation has not improved. In fact, it has gotten worse. The U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA) in Georgia – later renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC) to persuade protesters that SOA was closed – is one of the largest training organizations of military personnel from other nations. Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon sponsored a bill calling for the U.S. to stop aid if human rights are being violated.

A human rights defender, Berta Caceres, was murdered because she got an international hydroelectric corporation to back out of a contract that would destroy the land and poison the river. Among her killers were government officials and a graduate of SOA/WHINSEC.

I found it impossible to return to the United States after the delegation and simply live life with blinders, realizing that when we went to El Salvador, the State of Exception (suspension of Habeas Corpus) was in place. More than 60,000 people have already been arrested without access to due process, lawyers, or family. The day we arrived in Honduras, the same State of Exception went into effect. This process leads advocates to fear reprisal, minimizing freedom to advocate for basic human rights.

As Social Workers we commit to living six ethical principles based on the core values of our social work profession:

• Serve people in need and work to address social problems.

• Challenge social injustice and work for social change on behalf of oppressed people.

• Be respectful of every person and mindful of cultural and ethnic diversity.

• Recognize and value the importance of human relationships, and work to strengthen these relationships to enhance the well-being of individuals and communities.

• Serve with integrity, be trustworthy and uphold the profession's mission, values, ethical principles, and ethical standards.

• Practice within areas of competence, continuously develop professional knowledge and expertise, and contribute to the knowledge of the profession.

Given how much immigration (and the US-Mexico border) is in the news, social workers have a unique role to help change the public narrative from “blaming the victims” (immigrants) to acknowledging how U.S. policies toward other countries have helped create the very conditions of spiraling poverty and violence from which people are fleeing for their lives. In addition to funding militaries that repressed social movements in Central America, U.S. policy continues to prioritize business interests, including corporations engaged in extractives production and labor rights violations. Let us keep learning more about the root causes driving forced migration, become more effective advocates, and lend solidarity to inspiring communities working to defend their environment. Consider joining the “Struggle, Solidarity and Hope Delegation” to Honduras from September 10-18, 2023. Details on SHARE’S website .

About the Author:

Sharon White D. Min, MA, LCSW, LMFT is passionate about addressing human rights violations. Her relationships and experiences in Haiti, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras and working at the border has heightened Sharon’s passion for advocating for the marginalized. She opens doors for others to join in solidarity with the oppressed at home and in Latin America, especially with those who struggle to preserve land and water.