18 July 2023
In the last 25 years, victim participation in Guatemala faces various threats. The country has witnessed several transitional justice processes, including two truth commissions, a number of high-profile criminal prosecution processes after decades of impunity, and a reparation programme. Today, the state controls justice institutions, making it increasingly difficult for independent judges and prosecutors to do their job.
Impunity Watch’s latest report, The struggle for truth and justice in Guatemala: Victim and survivor participation in informal transitional justice processes explores the strategies and informal mechanisms that victims and survivors’ organisations use to influence transitional justice processes in Guatemala to attain their initial goals of: criminal justice, truth-seeking, historical memory, and reparations.
The new report is the latest addition to a broader multi-year comparative research project entitled Promoting access to justice through victim participation: Foregrounding informal processes, implemented by Impunity Watch and research teams from six countries: Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Indonesia, Syria, Tunisia, and now Guatemala; and funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands.
“Mobilisation has considerably helped motivate people and made them feel part of the struggle. … No matter how elaborated our agenda is, if the victims don’t participate with their presence, it is not possible.”
—Juan Pérez, member of the Q’anil Maya Kaqchikel Association for the Redress and Integral Development of Victims’ Communities of the Internal Armed Conflict in Chimaltenango, Asoq’anil
Background: Why is victim participation in Guatemala under threat?
Over time, important achievements in the struggle against impunity and corruption, such as the International Commission against Corruption in Guatemala (CICIG) have been undone. The government disbanded various institutions created to implement the Peace Accords in 2020. This has created an extremely complicated context for the victim movement in Guatemala which is struggling to maintain its relevance and effectiveness. Civil society organisations (CSOs), human rights activists, and survivors who played a crucial role in forcing exhumations of illegal graves, continue to face serious threats and repression by the state.
Through interviews with key victims’ and survivors’ organisations in Guatemala, the study examines their strategies to effect change. These include grassroots mobilisation, political and legal lobbying, healing processes through psychosocial support and commemorations, and the Inter-American Human Rights System. The report concludes by reflecting on the conditions that favour victims’ influence on formal transitional justice through informal means.
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Find out more about our work in Guatemala.
Photo credit: Juan Rosales for Impunity Watch, 2021.