On Friday there was a panel discussion about the June 28 Honduran coup called, “Honduras: The Struggle for Democracy.” Four panelists discussed the legality of the coup, the economy of Honduras and their connection.

I was especially impressed with Dr. Charles Kenney’s input, but despite this, the discussion was missing a major element: the human element.

A panel member claimed the average Honduran’s situation wouldn’t change no matter what happens, so the coup only matters for the precedent it sets.

The Honduran economic situation may not have dramatically changed, but I hope that panel member was being facetious and merely failed to clarify because the situation of the average Honduran has changed. The human rights situation in Honduras is a disaster.

Since the coup, Human Rights Watch has published six articles indicating an excessive use of force, arbitrary imprisonment, censorship, suspension of basic rights, including the right to assemble, ‘disappearances’ of people taken by government forces, sexual violence (mostly against women) and multiple occasions in which military personnel discharged their weapons into unarmed crowds.

This wasn’t happening before the coup.

The de facto leader of Honduras since June has been Roberto Micheletti. He is the former president of the Honduran Congress. This congress recently instituted legal protections for the military and police, should grievances be raised about these abuses.

Governments that enact laws to protect themselves don’t do so because they’re innocent or have their people’s interests at heart.

The changes in Hondurans’ rights weren’t an issue in this discussion on democracy in Honduras. The legality of the coup and economics were deemed more important to Honduran democracy. They aren’t.

What’s important is people. Institutions exist for the people; people don’t exist for the institutions. Economics isn’t what’s important.

Legally justifying a coup isn’t what’s important. The things that are important are people and their well-being, not the institutions.

The human rights violations were given just one sentence of the 90-minute discussion; this was in response to a question I posed regarding whether human rights should play into the discussion at hand.

It’s easy to get caught up in the laws, thinking that if something is legal, or could plausibly be legal, it’s right.

That’s wrong.

This obsession with law helps us forget that people are involved; we then forget to consider them into the equation.

If we forget about the legality of the coup, the Micheletti government and those who support it should be held responsible for the suffering and death they have caused.

If our concern was for the people of Honduras who have been beaten, shot, tear-gassed, raped, tortured and brutally murdered, we wouldn’t be worried about whether or not former President Zelaya violated the Honduran Constitution.

If we cared for those people, we would be screaming at the IMF for giving support to the Micheletti government. At this time it is the only major international body to do so, and they have done so with $150 million.

The center of every topic should be people. We need to get over our ideologies and start looking at the people. Focusing on people has the potential to fix real problems.

Honduras is not the only topic for which humanity needs increased concern. People need to be the focus of the health insurance debate, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, energy concerns, the air and water we breath and even international trade.

The bottom line is people. These are human issues; we need to keep people at the heart of it.

Barbara Streisand was right. It really is all about people.