Thirty-sixth session of ECLAC

Héctor Alejandro Palma Cerna is a Honduran politician, lawyer and diplomat and currently Vice-President of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).

He began his career in politics after the passage of Hurricane Mitch, working with a number of citizen organizations to press for institutional reforms, particularly in the justice system. He participated in the election campaign of the National Party that took Ricardo Maduro to the country’s presidency in 2002. While Maduro was President (2002-2006), he acted as Chief of Staff for the Ministry of Government and Justice (now the Ministry of the Interior), involving himself particularly in decentralization processes and measures to strengthen local administrations. He also advised the Ministry for Culture, Arts and Sport as it debated the modernization of sociocultural management in Honduras, mainly in the national parliament.

He has been the Permanent Representative of Honduras to the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and headed the Honduran delegation to the third International Conference on Financing for Development in Addis Ababa in 2015.

He graduated in Law from the Autonomous University of Honduras and specialized in International Law at San Pedro Sula University.